What stood in Babylon
The Ishtar Gate was one of the main entrances to Babylon, built under King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled from about 604 to 562 BCE. It opened onto the Processional Way, the ceremonial street of the city, and was dedicated to Ishtar, goddess of love and war. Its walls were faced with bricks glazed in deep blue, with rows of animals in relief.
On the gate itself the animals were bulls, sacred to the weather god Adad, and dragons, sacred to Marduk, the god of Babylon. Each animal had its meaning, and which animals appear where is a story of its own. The lions belonged to the street, not the gate.
What the gate was for
A city gate kept enemies out, but the Ishtar Gate also had a ceremonial job. It was the stage of the New Year festival, called akitu, the most important feast of the Babylonian year. It began in spring, on the first day of the month of Nisan, and in Babylon its rituals lasted about twelve days.
In the reconstruction scholars give from the ritual texts, the statue of Marduk was carried out of his temple, the Esagila, along the Processional Way and out through the Ishtar Gate to a festival house beyond the city walls. A few days later the gods returned in a triumphal procession. The lions on the walls of the street and the bulls and dragons on the gate watched over that route, which is why the whole ensemble was decorated with such care.
A double gate, and Berlin has the smaller half
The real Ishtar Gate was a double gate: an outer gate in the outer wall of the city and, behind it, a second gate in the much thicker inner wall. Since that inner wall was more massive, the inner gate must have been considerably taller. The reconstruction in Berlin presents only the smaller outer gate.
In other words, even before asking how many bricks are ancient, the Berlin gate shows only part of the monument: one piece of a larger entrance.
From fragments to a monument
The German Oriental Society excavated Babylon from 1899 to 1917 under Robert Koldewey. By then the gate had long since fallen apart, so what came out of the ground was hundreds of thousands of fragments of glazed brick. Under the division of finds then in force, fragments were assigned to Berlin in shares agreed with Istanbul in 1903 and with Baghdad in 1926.
The work in Berlin was slow and painstaking. The fragments were first soaked to remove the salt they had absorbed in the ground, and their glazes were strengthened with paraffin. Then teams of up to thirty people sorted them by motif and colour and, in about two years, assembled 72 animal reliefs. These reliefs were set into a new structure built of modern bricks, and the result went on show when the Pergamonmuseum opened in 1930.
So how much is original?
The honest answer is: the animals mostly, the gate much less. The bulls and dragons are made of ancient glazed pieces, fitted back together. The plain blue background, the shape of the arch and the overall height are a modern reconstruction built around them. The museum does not publish a percentage, and one 2023 essay described the Berlin gate as a modern impression of how the structure may have looked, rather than a copy of the original.
The colour and the animals are genuinely Babylonian, made with glazed brick about 2,600 years ago. What is modern is the frame that lets you see them together, at full size.
The street of lions
The same workshops also rebuilt part of the Processional Way, the street that led to the gate, with its striding lions in glazed brick. Panels from the street also went to other museums around the world, which is why the lion panels turn up far from Berlin.
Where to see it
The Ishtar Gate is in Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum, which closed in October 2023 for a long renovation. The north wing and central section are due to reopen on 4 June 2027, but the south wing, with the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way, is scheduled to stay closed until about 2037 (as of October 2026: check the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin before you go). The place where it stood is part of the ruins of Babylon, in Iraq.
Sources
- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum, “From Fragment to Monument: The Ishtar Gate in Berlin”.
- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, blog, “FAQ Pergamonmuseum: All you need to know about the refurbishment”; Associated Press, “Berlin’s Pergamon Museum will reopen in mid-2027” (May 2026).
- ANE Today, “The Ishtar Gate of Babylon” (2023).
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Ishtar Gate”.
