Latest updateĪll activity at the Ishtar Gate is currently frozen for safety reasons linked to COVID-19.
#City of babylon series#
Since 2016, WMF and the SBAH have been implementing a series of actions to reduce water damage at the Ishtar Gate and to provide a better visitor experience. A video the early documentation work supported by WMF early on can be found below.ĭetailed photo-documentation, monitoring programs, and preparatory studies by the Group allowed it to measure the changing groundwater level and its impact on masonry humidity. With WMF guidance, the SBAH’s Babylon Documentation Work Group digitally drew the Ishtar Gate at the brick-by-brick level, recording not only the monument’s form, but also its condition. During the project’s early planning process, the SBAH listed the Gate as one of five priority sites for general maintenance and conservation actions. WMF has been working with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) since 2009 on the Future of Babylon project.
![city of babylon city of babylon](https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2016/01/GettyImages-567940171-04e94eb.jpg)
German excavations of the Gate provided enough information on the walls and gate decorations to enable the Berlin museum to reconstruct the glazed relief animals, a reconstruction which can be found in Istanbul, Baghdad, and other museums today. The lowest levels of the Street of Procession and the Gate cannot be shown as they are too deep under present groundwater levels. Modern bricks were used to repair the original façade which had been taken away just above the modern level. The important remains of the Ishtar Gate remain on site in Babylon. German archaeologists only traced the larger, southern Gate next to the surface in order to establish the plan of the gate. German excavations by the German Oriental Society and the Berlin Museums during 10 months in 1902 unearthed the northern Gate down to the ground water at 26.1 m asl (+0.55 m). Subsequent excavations in 19 exposed the inside of the southern Gate down to the presently exposed level at 29.5 m asl (+4.0 m), and refilled the northern gate to the same level. In the 1940s, Iraqi excavations unearthed the southern larger gate room of the Ishtar Gate complex. Discovery of and Early Work on the Ishtar Gate Nine layers of unglazed relief animals have been documented, all facing incoming visitors to protect the city from evils. Bulls and dragons in brick reliefs were built into different levels of the gate to reference the patron God of the city, Marduk, and other divine entities. Originally built in unbaked mud brick with mud mortar like the walls around it, it was was rebuilt numerous times under Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in baked brick with tar mortar.
![city of babylon city of babylon](https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Seven/images/Jardins-de-Babylone/Porte-d-Istar.jpg)
![city of babylon city of babylon](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/02/08/ap19186683659558-ab6208e60e70afb507ba8b17fa2e4945779a53a7.jpg)
The Ishtar Gate existed as a double gate, one in each of the two parallel walls surrounding the inner city of Babylon, and stood over the magnificent Street of Procession which led from the North into the center of the city. The oldest references to the Ishtar Gate come from Old Babylonian cuneiform texts dated around 1600 BCE, and most of the archeological and documentary evidence we have of the Gate was produced under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BCE). It was the largest and most elaborate of the city’s gateways. The Ishtar Gate is one of the main gates surrounding the inner city of Babylon, capital of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Babylonia.