User:Nathananguyen/Ishtar Gate

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Discussing the structure of the Gate


 * The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum is not a complete replica of the entire gate. The original structure was a double gate with a smaller frontal gate and a larger and more grandiose secondary posterior section . The only section on display in the Pergamon is the smaller frontal segment of the structure.
 * Changes Made are in Italics inside Brackets below.
 * The Ishtar Gate (Arabic: بوابة عشتار‎) was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon[citation needed] (in the area of present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq). It was constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. It was part of a grand walled processional way leading into the city. The walls were finished in glazed bricks mostly in blue, with animals and deities in low relief at intervals, these also made up of bricks that are molded and colored differently. When German archaeologists [insert name Robert Koldewey] excavated in Babylon during the early 20th century, they dismantled the Ishtar Gate and packed it up to take with them to Berlin [reword this sentence to sound more empirical]. It was meticulously reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum. The gate is 50 feet high, and the original foundations extended another 45 feet underground. [The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum is not a complete replica of the entire gate. The original structure was a double gate with a smaller frontal gate and a larger and more grandiose secondary posterior section . The only section on display in the Pergamon is the smaller frontal segment of the structure.]  Other panels are in many other museums around the world [specify which museums].
 * Istanbul Archaeology Museum
 * Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark
 * Detroit Institute of Arts
 * Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden
 * Louvre
 * State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich
 * Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna
 * Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
 * Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
 * Oriental Institute in Chicago
 * Rhode Island School of Design Museum
 * Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
 * Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut
 * British Museum.
 * The creation of the Gate out of wood and clay glazed to look like lapis lazuli could possibly be a reference to the goddess Inanna, who became syncretized with the goddess Ishtar during the reign of Sargon of Akkad. In the myth of Inanna's descent to the underworld, Inanna is described as donning seven accoutrements of lapis lazuli [Insert Citation] symbolizing her divine power. Once captured by the queen of the underworld, Inanna is described as being lapis lazuli, silver, and wood [Insert Citation], two of these materials being key components in the construction of the Ishtar Gate. The creation of the gate out of wood and "lapis lazuli" could be symbolic of the gate being part of the goddess herself.

Add to Excavation and Display

 * The main gate led to the Southern Citadel, the gate itself seeming to be a part of Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, two of the most prominent defensive walls of Babylon. There were three primary entrances to the Ishtar Gate. The central entrance which contained the double gate structure (two sets of double doors, for a fourfold door structure), and doors flanking the main entrance to the left and right, both containing the signature double door structure.

Bibliography/Notes

 * R. P. D. (1932). The Lion of Ishtar. Bulletin of the Associates in Fine Arts at Yale University, 4(3), 144-147. Retrieved September 19, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/405