The walls of Babylon from the inside were lined with fresco belts of blue and green glazed tiles, ornaments and numerous figures of lions, gazelles, dragons and warriors with weapons in their hands. The richest decorative finish was probably the double gate of the goddess of love and fertility Ishtar, located in the northern part of the city between the royal palace and the temple of Nin-Mah. The height of the gate is 26 meters. From top to bottom, they are covered with blue, blue and green glazed tiles (Fig. 8.6).
Rice. 8.6. Gate of the goddess Ishtar. Layout
Rice. 8.7. Bull ( rimi) and dragon ( sirruh, mushrush) from the gate of the goddess Ishtar (enamelled brick)
Such a color combination caused the visual effect of “moiré flickering” – in bright sunlight, the wall began to “breathe”, spreading illusory waves from the air currents heated by the Sun.
Rice. 8.8. Gate of the goddess Ishtar. State Museum, Berlin
The wide arch of the gate is edged with traditional rosettes and ornaments. The surface of the towers is also decorated with yellowish-orange figures of bulls and dragons - horned half-crocodiles, half-dogs ( mushrushey) with scaly bodies and huge bird claws instead of paws (Fig. 8.7). In total, 575 such animals were found on the reliefs of Babylon. They were considered sacred animals of Bela-Marduk, the supreme god of Babylon, and Ishtar. Next to the images were placed cuneiform lines left by Nebuchadnezzar II: “I placed terrible rimi(bulls) and terrible Sirrukhov(dragons) on the walls of the portico and leave this gate in all their splendor to humanity, so that it looks at them with wonder ... ".
At the end of the 19th century, the reliefs of the gate of the goddess Ishtar were dismantled and transported by German archaeologists to the Berlin State Museum, where they are still kept (Fig. 8.8).
3. Procession Road of Marduk
From the gate of the goddess Ishtar begins its journey south to the temple of Marduk, the famous "Procession Road of Marduk." It also went from west to east from the banks of the Euphrates to the main sanctuary of Babylon - Esagila. The total width of the road is 24 meters. Of these, 7.5 meters are paved with white limestone slabs and edged with a border of dark pink breccia. The space between the paved part of the road and the walls was filled with black asphalt. On the lower edge of each plate you can read the inscription: “I, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon. I paved the Babylonian pilgrimage road for the processions of the great lord Marduk with stone slabs. Oh Marduk! Oh great lord! Grant eternal life!…”.
Rice. 8.9. Procession road of Marduk. Fragment
The road passed as if through a stone channel-sluice. On both sides of it rose seven-meter walls, evenly dissected by towers. A massive cornice with battlements and stripes of relief rosettes covered with multicolored glazes ran along the top of the walls.
The lower part of the walls on both sides of the road is decorated with two bright blue ribbons of ceramic panels. A procession of one hundred and twenty guardian lions unfolded along them - 60 on each side of the road (Fig. 8.9). The animals were of two colors - white-yellow with dark yellow manes and yellow with red-brown manes. The sizes of bared predators are close to natural - more than two meters in length. The most likely prototype of these animals can be considered the Persian lion, now exterminated, a pale yellow animal with a brown or black fluffy mane. The figures of walking predators are full of strength and expression. They are made in the best traditions of Assyrian art (Nimrud, Nineveh, Dur-Sharrukin). It is quite possible that these frescoes were made by captive masters from defeated Assyria.
The conquerors of neighboring countries attacked Babylon many times, and ravaged the city - but it was rebuilt several times. The buildings were built of burnt brick, which was not afraid of either water or sun. The main gate of Ishtar was lined with colored glazed bricks, against which figures of animals were depicted.
The cult of the gods in Babylon was associated with the worship of the Sun, Moon, Mars, Jupiter and other planets. The Babylonians represented the earth as a disk and the sky as a dome. From observations of the movement of the Sun, the concept of a circle was born, a circle that contributed to the invention of the wheel.
Gate of the goddess Ishtar.
The famous monument of Babylon - the gate of the goddess Ishtar is the eighth gate of the inner city. This masterpiece was built in 575 BC in the northern part of the city by order of King Nebuchadnezzar.
The Ishtar Gate has the appearance of an arch of a semicircular shape of huge size. On both sides, the arch is surrounded by huge walls that stretch along the ritual Processional Road. The arched gates erected in honor of the goddess Ishtar were built from, which was covered with bright blue glaze on top and painted with patterns using white, yellow and black glaze.
On the walls leading to the Ishtar Gate one could see magnificent bas-relief images of animals in the closest to natural poses. So, about 120 bas-reliefs of lions were depicted. There are also three-dimensional images of bulls and sirrushes - mythical creatures that look like dragons and griffins at the same time, whose body is covered with scales, and horns flaunt on a snake head.
In total, there were 575 bas-relief images of animals on the gate of the goddess Ishtar. The gates themselves were closed with doors made of cedar wood. The roof of the gate was also made of an extremely strong breed of wood - Lebanese cedar.
The Ishtar gate had an extremely important ritual and cult significance - statues of the gods were solemnly carried through them on the day of the celebration of the New Year. The procession passed along the Processional Road.
At the moment, various fragments of the famous Ishtar Gate are kept in museums around the world: in Istanbul, the Louvre, New York, Detroit and Chicago. The most accurate copy of the Ishtar Gate was built in Iraq at the entrance to the historical museum.
Fall of Babylon.
Babylon fell in 539 BC. The Babylonian state existed for 88 years, and became part of the Persian state. The Persians adopted cuneiform writing, astronomical knowledge and the art of counting from the Babylonians.
In 331 BC, it fell apart under the blow of the army of Alexander the Great. In 323 BC, when Alexander died, Mesopotamia became part of the Seleucid state. During this period, Babylon becomes the center of astronomical, astrological and mathematical knowledge.
At the end of the 2nd century BC, Babylon fell under the rule of the Narthian kings, who in 126 BC destroyed and devastated the city. This period was the final fall of Babylon.
Babylon exploration.
In 1876, English archaeologist George Smith discovered 3,000 cuneiform tablets. Their deciphering showed that they were part of the Babylonian library. This discovery has become a very valuable discovery for science.
In 1908, the German government conducts archaeological excavations under the direction of Robert Koldewey. A processional road was found that led scholars to the Ishtar Gate. After the death of Koldewey, many studies appeared on the writing, mythology, economic structure and social structure of Babylon.
Ishtar was the goddess of love, passion, fertility, nature and was often depicted as a beautiful woman, whose body was overgrown with tender, green shoots.
In those distant times, in the 7th-5th centuries BC, there were several kingdoms in Mesopotamia: Assyrian, Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian. The influence of the cult of Ishtar quickly spread to all the Middle Eastern lands.
Information about Ishtar is preserved in the most ancient literary work: the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written over a period of one and a half thousand years.
Cult of the goddess Ishtar
Ishtar's name means "clear sky". Blue is the ancient Sumerian sign of the goddess Inanna. The full sign of Ishtar or Inanna consisted of a ribbon woven into it, which forms two ends and a six-pointed star in the center. Ishtar was also the goddess of the sky.
In Babylon, Ishtar was also considered the patroness of priestesses of love and harlots. There was even temple prostitution.
Every day, several women had to sit on a specially designated place near the sanctuaries of Astarte and, for a coin, were given to the men passing by. Only after such a peculiar ritual, women could feel like full-fledged mistresses. The ritual was repeated the next year.
In the 7th century BC in Babylon, and throughout Asia Minor, the cult of Ishtar was the most important.
Ishtar Gate
Babylon was first mentioned in the 3rd millennium BC. during the reign of the Akkadian king Sargon (2369-2314 BC). They left descriptions of Babylon Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo. Only Herodotus found Babylon as it was under the emperor Nebuchadnezzar II, who became famous for building a lot in Babylon.
It should be noted that for the ancient world, Babylon was a fabulously rich kingdom inhabited by a myriad of inhabitants. And this is not surprising. Under Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon was inhabited by about 360 thousand inhabitants. Huge for the ancient world.
Eight gates led to Babylon, and they were all named after various gods. The northwestern gate of Ishtar was built in 575 BC. e. by order of Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II.
It was a grandiose, monumental and very beautiful gate. Unfortunately, now only part of the copy of the gate remains. The gates themselves were taken out at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Ishtar Gate is a huge, semicircular arch, bounded at the edges by high walls and overlooking the so-called Processional Road. The ancient inhabitants of Babylon brought statues of the gods through the Ishtar gate, celebrated the Israeli New Year.
The coffin with the body of the Great Alexander of Macedon, who was also considered a lover of women, was brought into the city through the same gate.
The gate, dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, was built of brick, covered with bright blue, yellow, white and black glaze. The general background of the gate was blue-blue. Blue was the symbol of Ishtar.
The walls of the gate and the Processional Road were decorated with bas-reliefs of amazing beauty, strikingly resembling living animals in various poses. The walls of the path were decorated with about 120 bas-reliefs of lions.
The walls of the Ishtar Gate were covered with alternating rows of images of sirrus and bulls. In total, there are about 575 animal images on the gate dedicated to the goddess Ishtar. The roof and gate doors were made of cedar. For a long time, Ishtar was the main goddess of the Babylonian pantheon. She was identified with the planet Venus.
The Ishtar Gate is the eighth gate of the inner city in Babylon. Built in 575 BC. e. by order of King Nebuchadnezzar in the northern part of the city.
The Ishtar Gate is a huge semicircular arch, bounded on the sides by giant walls and overlooking the so-called Processional Road, along which the walls stretched. The gate is dedicated to the goddess Ishtar and built of brick, covered with bright blue, yellow, white and black glaze. The walls of the gates and the Processional Road are covered with bas-reliefs of extraordinary beauty, depicting animals in poses very close to natural. The walls of the path are decorated with about 120 bas-reliefs of lions. The walls of the gate are covered with alternating rows of images of sirrus and bulls. In total, there are about 575 animal images on the gates. The roof and gate doors were made of cedar. Statues of the gods passed through the Ishtar Gate along the Processional Road on New Year's Day.
The Ishtar Gate is described as follows:
"Rows of bricks go one over another. Dragons and bulls never meet in the same horizontal row, but a row of bulls follows a row of sirros, and vice versa. Each individual image occupies 13 bricks in height, and the gap between them is 11 bricks. Thus, the distance from the bottom of one image to the bottom of the other is 24 bricks, or almost exactly two meters, that is, four Babylonian els.
When the work on the gate was completed, Nebuchadnezzar wrote an inscription, which was made in cuneiform and put on public display. The inscription begins like this:
Lion from the Processional Road leading to the Ishtar Gate
“I am Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, a pious prince, ruling by the will and favor of Marduk, the supreme ruler of the City, a favorite of Heaven, cunning and tireless ... always caring for the well-being of Babylon, the wise firstborn son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon ...”
A tablet with this inscription is now kept in the Pergamon Museum.
The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Road was made in the 1930s. in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin from material found by archaeologist Robert Koldewey. The dimensions of the restored Ishtar Gate are 14 meters high and 10 meters long.
Fragments of the gates and lions that adorned the Processional Road are kept in various museums around the world. The Istanbul Archaeological Museum houses bas-reliefs of lions, dragons and bulls. The Detroit Museum of Art has a bas-relief of sirrush. There are bas-reliefs of lions in the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
A copy of the Ishtar Gate was built in Iraq at the entrance to the museum, the construction of which was never completed ....
An example is the Assyrian goddess Ishtar and the associated cuneiform letter from the Tel Amarna archive, the sender of which is the Mitanni king Tushratta, and the recipient is Amenhotep III (the royal correspondents were related: Tushratta's sister Giluhipa was married to Amenhotep III). In the thirty-sixth year of his reign, Amenhotep III fell seriously ill and died. In the same year, shortly before his death, Tushratta sent him a letter and a “miraculous” idol of the goddess Ishtar to heal the aged pharaoh. From the text of the letter it is clear that the goddess had previously been to Egypt and was popular there: “This is what Istar of Nineveh, the mistress of all countries, says: “I am going to Egypt, to the country that I love.” I send it to you, it has gone. Already in the days of my father, the mistress went to this land, and, as she was honored then, so may my brother now honor her ten times more, and send her away and return her in joy. May Istar, the mistress of heaven, preserve my brother and me for a hundred thousand years, and may she give us both a great joy. Yes, we live in harmony - Istar for me is my goddess, but for my brother she is not his deity. X. Ranke notes that in Nineveh Ishtar was revered as the goddess of war, while in Egypt she acts as a deity helping the sick. In support of his observation, the scientist cites two Egyptian monuments from the time of the New Kingdom. One of them depicts an Egyptian praying for the health of the goddess Kadesh and the Syrian goddess Ashtarta, the other depicts an Egyptian praying for the health of the goddess Ishtar. In the view of the Egyptians, the Syrian Ashtarta and the Nineveh Ishtar are one and the same goddess. She was worshiped in a special temple, in Memphis, as reported by Herodotus (II, 112), calling the goddess “foreign Aphrodite”. Ashtartu was often identified with the goddess Sekhmet. X. Ranke admits that the adjective h; rw, which is usually understood as "Syriac", is better read as "Hurrian".
Thus, the penetration of foreign deities (Anat, Ashtart, Kadesh, Reshep, etc.) into the Egyptian pantheon was quite natural and understandable during the New Kingdom.
Ashtarta penetrated not only into the cult, but also into mythology. For almost 90 years, science has known the papyrus, or rather, its numerous fragments, which tells the myth of the goddess Ashtart. Due to the fragmentation of the text, it is impossible to say anything definite about its content. A. Gardiner was able to establish that this text is not actually a myth about Ashtart, but a myth in which the goddess played an important, but still not the first role. The main role in it belongs not to the Egyptian, but to the Semitic god named Nam, the god of the sea element (the Egyptians did not have their own sea deity). As is clear from the fragments of the myth, the god Nam was distinguished by an imperious, despotic character. The vicissitudes of the plot cannot be restored. The text probably dates back to the time of Haremheb. Interestingly, a little later, during the 19th dynasty, yam is mentioned in the Orbinei papyrus, in the tale of two brothers.
The presence of Syro-Palestinian and other Asian deities in Egyptian religious ideas is undoubtedly a completely natural historical phenomenon, due to Egypt's ties with these countries. It should be emphasized, however, that foreign deities in Egypt very quickly acquired the features of Egyptian deities, got used to the Egyptian pantheon, in a word, were Egyptianized.
In the northern part of the city.
Appearance
The Ishtar Gate is a huge semicircular arch, bounded on the sides by giant walls and overlooking the so-called Processional Road, along which the walls stretched. The gate is dedicated to the goddess Ishtar and built of brick, covered with bright blue, yellow, white and black glaze. The walls of the gates and the Processional Road are covered with bas-reliefs of extraordinary beauty, depicting animals in poses very close to natural. The walls of the path are decorated with about 120 bas-reliefs of lions. The walls of the gate are covered with alternating rows of images of sirrus and bulls. In total, there are about 575 animal images on the gates. The roof and gate doors were made of cedar. Statues of the gods passed through the Ishtar Gate along the Processional Road on New Year's Day.
Reconstruction
The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Road was made in the 1930s. in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin from material found by archaeologist Robert Koldewey. The dimensions of the restored Ishtar Gate are 14 meters high and 10 meters long.
A replica of the Ishtar Gate was built in Iraq at the entrance to the museum, which was never completed.
Links
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