The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, walk way entrance

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, Pergamon Museum, Museum Island, Berlin

Glazed bricks, modern reconstruction Babylon (Iraq), 6th century BCE

Division of finds, VA Bab 1408-1456

The gate, with its vividly coloured glazed bricks, formed a unified architectural ensemble with the Processional Way, which led up to it from the north, and was part of Babylon's inner circle of defensive walls. The smaller, outer gate façade, which was about 15 m high, has been reconstructed in the museum. All the animal reliefs and the lower decorative bands were laboriously pieced together from original fragments which were brought to Berlin in 1928 (see also the text opposite, next to the map].

Finds of inscriptions prove that the gate, dating from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BCE), was once dedicated to Ishtar, the goddess of sexuality, love and war, who is represented by her symbol, the lion, on the Processional Way. On the gate itself are figures of bulls, representing the storm god Adad, and a hybrid creature which symbolised Marduk, the protective deity of the city. The snake-dragon (mushhushshu in the Babylonian language) consists of the head and body of a snake, a lion's forelegs, a bird's hind legs and a tail that ended in a scorpion's sting.

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