Ishtar Gate was built in Babylon in 575 BC, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and is a great arch of bricks, covered with bright blue enamel. Arch walls are decorated with sacred animals, dragons and bulls, which the Babylonians considered satellites of the gods. Fragments of the gate are now in various museums around the world: in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, the Louvre, in New York, Chicago; in Boston reliefs of lions, dragons and bulls are stored; in Detroit, at the Museum of Fine Arts, relief of sirrush is stored. A copy of the Ishtar Gate in Iraq is at the entrance to the museum.
However, it would be wrong to start the description of the Ishtar Gate without mentioning the city of Babylon, a unique phenomenon to ancient history. Populous (at the height of a population of 200,000), with high-rise buildings city for contemporaries has been a sacred and symbolic place. Successful wars meant the growth of military loot, which Nebuchadnezzar successfully converted into improvement of Babylonia capital. Firstly, he has worked on updating the fortification of the city. Babylon was surrounded by a double wall of raw and baked bricks, held together with a solution of asphalt and reeds. The height of the outer wall reached 8 meters, width - 3.7 meters. The length of the wall in circumference is equal to of 8.3 km. The interior walls were even higher - 11-14 m and even wider - 6.5 m. Every 20 meters defensive towers were placed. Entrance to the city was through one of the 8 fortified gates (Delaporte, 1996).
The study of architecture and construction of Mesopotamia states testifies the great technological leap, which a construction craft has undergone in the period between the III millennium and the last centuries BC. However, all the methods of construction were purely empirical, and artistic-plastic tasks of architecture were reduced to creation of grandiose constructions, overwhelming the viewer. In addition to this, the methods of construction of reliable fortifications and systems have been developed, the principles of land irrigation were mastered, related to the construction of engineering structures (canals, dams, artificial reservoirs). Techniques of masonry walls of mud and baked bricks lined with their natural stone and tiles were developed.
Inside the city walls, on different parts of the city, two buildings dominated: on the one side the royal palace, on the opposite - erected on an artificial platform the main sanctuary of the Babylonians - Esagila. It was a huge structure, each side of which is equal to a length of 400 meters. To the south a magnificent 91-meter ziggurat Etemenanki was placed (“temple of heaven and earth cornerstone”), which became the basis for the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel. On top of the tower the sanctuary of the chief god of Babylon Marduk was located, faced with glazed bricks, its walls and ceilings were covered with gold and decorated with precious stones. From the main entrance to the ziggurat street led to religious processions paved, 35 meters wide. It ends just at the Gate of Ishtar. Processional way was, perhaps, the best road of ancient world, because it was intended not to move of people and carts, but the great god and patron of Babylon, Marduk, the statue of which every year made his way along it to Esagila. And it took its start just at the Ishtar Gate. Ishtar was highly revered as a goddess of beauty and love, compared with Venus. The cult of Ishtar was born in the city of Uruk, the patroness of whom she was. Among the cities of Babylonia seven largest excelled, in the number of which was Uruk. Each patron deity of one of these cities was reflected in the gate of Babylon, which was supposed to symbolize the unity of the country. And as Ishtar was considered wife of Marduk, the main front gates were devoted to her (Black, 1992).
Gate construction is quite simple - they are a semicircular arch, flanked by two rectangular 14-meter high tower with a decorative parapet. On the inside the gate fit with two more massive towers, combined by open gallery, but to this day inner towers did not survive and were not reproduced in any of the existing reconstructions. The architectural decoration of the gate of Ishtar was in line with the tastes of Mesopotamian architecture - they were covered with dark-blue, yellow, white and black tiles forming fancy belts and animalistic reliefs. The combination of strong graphics and colorful decoration is another feature of the Mesopotamian style of architecture and the visual arts. This multiple reproduction of one and the same relief on glazed bricks of white, black, red, blue, yellow colors created a special ceremonial rhythm (Curatola, 2007). Linear relief type was ideally suited to the harsh lines of the monolithic architecture, as clearly illustrated by such buildings in the New Babylon as namely Ishtar Gate.
Wall sections in front of goal, limited by North palace of Nebuchadnezzar II and defended the strengthening of the gate, were lined with blue glazed bricks formed the relief image of a procession of lions - white with yellow manes and yellow with red manes. This part of the road was wide in more 25 meters and was a kind of threshold of the Ishtar Gate. The total length of the frisos reached 180 m. The Ishtar Gate consisted of two large internal and two external smaller towers, lined with blue glazed bricks alternating with relief images of bulls and dragons, too white with yellow manes and yellow with red manes. Arch of the Gates had a width of 4.5 m and a height of about 9 m. The architectural representation of the gate was associated with characteristic also for earlier periods in the history of Mesopotamia principle of the rhythmic alternation of simple vertical volumes (Curatola, 2007). To create a common rhythm in the ensemble, simultaneously rows of flat and convex images that adorned the same plane of the gate were used. In general, in the strict rhythm some deliberates were made, breaking the monotony of the whole: the alternation of light and dark backgrounds, the diversity in the order of placement of flat and convex images, small changes in the recurring figures of lions.
It should be noted that among the vast pantheon of the gods of Mesopotamia, Ishtar was both a central female deity and patron deity and the deity, embodied in its image features of many of the Mesopotamian and non-Mesopotamian deities of the similar type, i.e. in it local and universal elements of the sacred united. The monument in honor of such a powerful goddess just has to be located in close proximity to the main sanctuary of the city and the whole country, and even on the sacred road to it. Ishtar was the goddess of love and fertility, as well as the goddess of war. Her symbol is the lion. It decorates the walls of Processional street outside the gate. At the gate itself raised bulls figures (animal of weather god Adad, Bull) and dragons-sirrushes (Marduk animal). This last character (which is also called the Babylonian dragon) combines features of the four representatives of the fauna: the eagle, snake, scorpion and an unidentified four-legged (Black, 1992). Strictly sustained intervals between animals tuned viewer to the rhythm of a solemn procession. In the images of animals on the gate an artist interleaves rows of flat and convex images, and thus by the game of light and shade breaks the monotony of the whole, as was mentioned above.
Excavations have shown that sirrushes and bulls already existed on the original version of the gate, but without the tile covering. Later Processional Street was raised for a few meters, and a new gate was built on the old ground. Now, bulls and dragons were already dressed with tiles, but still not relief. The third and final version of the gate was connected with the restructuring and consolidation of the city walls, where the street level rose by 12-14 m again (Curatola, 2007).
Ishtar Gate was not the most ambitious and high construction. They were not even the main gate but were kind of the first small gate behind which higher and more powerful gates were placed. Moreover, presented in the Pergamon Museum exhibit is not entirely accurate, lower copy of the original, which itself could not fit in the museum building. However, by the level of expression the Ishtar Gate is uniquely distinguished from other urban areas of ancient Babylon (Curatola, 2007).
The main attracting the attention element of the Gate are reliefs depicting wildlife Mesopotamia. In total there are about 575 of them. Like the gate, they are made of burnt glazed bricks of dark-blue color. In a similar style also the walls are made, that limited the road for religious processions, in which during the holidays (for example, the Babylonian New Year) processions with the statues of the gods were going. Unfortunately, in 1902, during the excavation, upper part of the Ishtar Gate collapsed. In Berlin about a thousand of fragments was taken, of which experts managed to restore the original appearance with the greatest possible accuracy (Curatola, 2007). Dark blue walls of the famous Ishtar Gate is deeply symbolic – this is heaven gate of the city, which is itself a “divine gate”. Each spike of the walls is a small model of ziggurat, it is stairs that lead up into the sky. The wall itself is vast space of heaven with astral signs of the gods (Delaporte, 1996).
The enormity of this architectural creation, like the road of Marduk, is not so much in size as in the enamel. To create the Ishtar Gate components were required, which were absent in Babylon. They were brought from countries which at that time were considered the outskirts of the world. The temperature required for the manufacture of enamel must be maintained at no less than 900ºC. Technology of production of Babylonian bricks was as follows: reliefs were carved on the brick, which was produced by immersing the clay mass in special wooden molds. Dried bricks were coated with the liquid coating and fired in a kiln. The blue, yellow and other colors were prepared by adding of different metals in colorless glaze. The vitreous coating was enough volumetric - 10 mm, and so strong that the surface of the gates preserved from damage and moisture over the centuries (Curatola, 2007).
Near the Gate of Ishtar decorative richness of the enclosing walls of the street has increased; on top colored frieze and a number of spikes stretched, and across the bottom - wide panel with relief images of walking light yellow and the white lions on a dark-blue background; friso and panels were made of glazed bricks.
New approach was also expansion of color scale applied in architecture. In addition to natural in the conditions of the Babylonian construction equipment black and white colors (whitewashed walls, coating with bitumen), also dark blue and yellow colors are entered, typical for the landscape surrounding construction. The Gates shining by deep blue azure are a natural center to which all the composition tends, and dynamics of the whole is even more emphasized by “flowing” from the gate to the outside rows of dark-blue and blue rectangles on the walls with walking lions.
Thus, the brightness of the color and the extraordinary abundance of the enamel surface gave the entire decoration of the Ishtar Gate particularly scenic nature, which is a clear manifestation of Babylon decorative architecture. Most of the tiles of Ishtar Gate were transported in 1930 to Berlin, where under the roof of the Pergamon Museum full-size design of this majestic building was created. A copy of the Gates made of new materials, was built in Iraq in the city of al-Hilla, close to its historical location.
Obviously, the Babylonian architects and artists have found the solutions for a number of fundamental questions of architecture, sculpture, painting and applied art. In the monumental buildings, despite their simple and severe, approaching a cubic, shapes, a certain understanding of the architectural mass and its division developed. The architectural solution of the Ishtar Gate indicates that although the mas in the architecture of Mesopotamia played a major role in getting over the inner space, a significant achievement was the application of a vault (arch) that opened up new possibilities for spatial solutions. In the synthesis of architecture and fine arts namely architecture had a decisive importance.
References
Black, J.A. (1992). Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. London: British Museum.
Curatola, Giovanni (2007). The Art and Architecture of Mesopotamia. Abbeville Press.
Delaporte, L. (1996). Mesopotamia: the Babylonian and Assyrian Civilization. London: Routledge.
