Dynastic History|Ishtar Gate, Babylon — What Was Left When the Glaze Went to Berlin

The gate that carried Ishtar's name stood on the northern edge of بابل, on the road the New Year procession took into the city. It is conventionally dated to about 575 BCE, in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE); some accounts put it nearer 569. Its builders faced it in glazed brick, blue ground with rows of aurochs and the mušḫuššu, the dragon of Marduk, moulded in relief and fired in a workshop that had to turn out identical animals by the hundred. A long cuneiform dedication set into the structure explains, in the king's own voice, why he built it. That text is the dynasty's account of itself, and it is also the most detailed account available.

Robert Koldewey dug here for the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft from 1899 to 1917. His team uncovered some fourteen metres of foundation that had sat below the ancient street level, and the glazed brick above it went into barrels, down the Euphrates, and on to Germany. What stayed was the unglazed lower structure, still carrying its moulded bulls and dragons in plain brick.

Who made and hauled that brick is not recorded. The palace stores a few hundred metres away did keep ration lists, and those name deported craftsmen and a captive foreign king drawing an allowance. The foundation courses stand in the open air inside the World Heritage property inscribed in 2019. A full-size replica gate built in 1987 stands nearby, and it is the way most visitors now enter the site.

📸 Cover: the unglazed foundation courses of the original gate at Babylon, David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons