VI
THE ISHTAR GATE
The magnificent approach by way of the Procession Street corresponds entirely with the importance, the size, and the splendour of the Ishtar Gate. With its walls which still stand 12 metres high, covered with brick reliefs, it is the largest and most striking ruin of Babylon and—with the exception of the tower of Borsippa which, though now shapeless, is higher—of all Mesopotamia (see ground-plan on Fig. 46).
Fig. 18.—Eastern end of the mud-brick wing, at the Ishtar Gate, from the north.
It was a double gateway. Two doorways close together, one behind the other, formed into one block by short connecting walls, lead through the walls of crude brick (Fig. 18), which are equally closely placed. At a later period the latter formed a transept which stood out square across the acropolis and afforded special protection to the inner part, the Southern Citadel (cf. the restored view, Fig. 43). Apparently these walls were originally connected directly with the inner town wall still extant at Homera, for inscriptions found there prove conclusively that to it belonged the name Nimitti-Bel, while the Ishtar Gate is itself frequently spoken of in other inscriptions as belonging to both Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel. Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel are the two oft-mentioned celebrated fortress walls of Babylon, of which we shall presently speak (p. 150 et seq.).
Fig. 19.—General view of the Ishtar Gate from the north.
Fig. 20.—Gold plaque from grave in the Nabopolassar Palace (scale 3: 1).
Of each of the two gateways two widely projecting towers close to the entrance are still standing (Fig. 19), and behind them a space closed by a second door. This space, which is generally called the gateway court, although it was probably roofed in, shows clear signs that its primary object was to protect the leaves of the double door which opened back into it from the weather, and also that it strengthened the possibilities of the defences. In the case of smaller gates which do not possess these interior chambers, the leaves of the doors were inserted in the thickness of the wall, which afforded a protection; an embrasure which is absent in the gateways. On the northern gate the gateway chamber lies transversely, on the southern it extends along the central axis. Here also it is enclosed with walls of such colossal thickness that it may be supposed to have supported a central tower of great height, but nothing remains in proof of this. This assumption is delineated in Fig. 21, while in Fig. 43 it is taken for granted that the gateway chamber was commanded by the towers. Here, as in all the other buildings, we have little to guide us as to the superstructure. Among the ornaments in a grave in the Southern Citadel was a rectangular gold plate (Fig. 20) which on the face represents a great gateway. On it, near the arched door, we see the two towers overtopping the walls, while on their projecting upper part triangular battlements and small circular loopholes can be seen. Of the latter we found thick wedge-shaped stones under the blue enamelled bricks, and also part of the stepped battlements in blue enamel which, on the whole, may have had an appearance of triangles.
Fig. 21.—Section through the Ishtar Gate.
Fig. 22.—Grooved expansion joints at the Ishtar Gate.
The gateway itself was not placed immediately in the mud wall, but between four wing-like additions of burnt brick, in each of which was a doorway. Thus the Ishtar Gate had three entrances, the central one with fourfold doors, and one to right and left, each with double doors. The foundations of the main building are so deep that, owing to the present high water-level, we could not get to the foot of them (Fig. 21). The gateway wings are not carried down so far, and the walls that stretch northward still less. It is conceivable that those parts of the wall where the foundations are specially deep do not sink so much in the course of time as those of shallower foundations, and settlement is unavoidable even with these, standing as they do upon earth and mud. Thus where the foundations are dissimilar there must be cleavages in the walls, which would seriously endanger the stability of the building. The Babylonians foresaw this and guarded against it. They devised the expansion joint, which we also make use of under similar circumstances. By this means walls that adjoin each other but which are on foundations of different depths are not built in one piece. A narrow vertical space is left from top to bottom of the wall, leaving the two parts standing independent of each other. In order to prevent any possibility of their leaning either backwards or forwards, in Babylon a vertical fillet was frequently built on to the less deeply rooted wall, which slid in a groove in the main wall (Fig. 22). The two blocks run in a guide, as an engineer would call it. In the case of small isolated foundations, the actual foundation of burnt brick rests in a substructure of crude brick shaped like a well, filled up with earth, in which it can shift about at the base without leaning over, which gives it play like the joints of a telescope. In this way the small postament near the eastern tower of our gate is constructed, and also the round one which stands to the westward of it on the open space in front of the gate (Fig. 23). On these postaments and on similar ones in the northern gateway court and in the intermediate court must “the mighty bronze colossi of bulls and the potent serpent figures” have stood which Nebuchadnezzar placed in the entries of the Ishtar Gate (Steinplatten inscription, col. 6).
Fig. 23.—View of the Ishtar Gate from the west.
Where the southern door adjoined its western buttress there were some remarkable and rather considerable ancient cavities in the wall, for which I cannot discover any certain explanation. They were filled with earth, and had not been meddled with in modern times. Later than these, but also of ancient times, there is a well hewn out in the northern wing. A narrow staircase led down to it, and could only be reached by a passage 50 centimetres wide cut through the wall, which opened on to the space in front of the gate. The exit was hidden away in a corner, and almost entirely concealed.