DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
And one of the most astonishing objects they have is-- well,
it's not an object.
DR. BETH HARRIS: It's a gate for a city.
There were eight double gates that formed part of the walls
around the ancient city of Babylon.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's huge.
DR. BETH HARRIS: It doesn't just impress us,
it impressed people when it was built.
In fact, it was called one of the Wonders of the World.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So Nebuchadnezzar,
of biblical fame, ascended to the throne
and proceeded to rebuild the already
ancient city of Babylon.
This is a city that has its roots in the third millennia
BC, but had become a major political center under King
Hammurabi in the 1700s BCE.
The city had remained populated, but regained importance
in the sixth century under Nebuchadnezzar II
and under his father, and what we're seeing here
is part of the enormous building campaign
that Nebuchadnezzar II had undertaken.
DR. BETH HARRIS: We might recognize Nebuchadnezzar
from the Bible, from the Book of Daniel.
He's the ruler of Babylon who conquers and destroys
the Temple in Jerusalem and who's
responsible for the exile of the Jews.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Clearly he was very powerful.
He was able to undertake this enormous building campaign.
He fortified and strengthened 11 miles of wall
around the city of Babylon.
He reconstructed the Great Ziggurat
in Babylon, which had the temple of Marduk at its top
and is probably the source of the story
of the Tower of Babel.
He created palaces, and he created
this extraordinary gate.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And Hanging Gardens, which were also
considered one of the Wonders of the World.
So the city of Babylon had eight double gates.
The one we're looking at is one of those gates,
and actually the smaller of the double gate.
The other one would have been even larger,
if that's possible to imagine.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: In fact, so large
that the museum can't actually put it on
display even in this very large space.
This gate-- which, of course, would only
be opened for the friendly-- is at the end
of a long processional way lined with beautiful lions that
speak very clearly of pride, of power,
and of Nebuchadnezzar's rule.
DR. BETH HARRIS: The lions that we see on the processional way
represent Ishtar, one of the Babylonian goddesses,
the goddess of war and wisdom and sexuality.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: They're raised up to eye level.
And they're a little bit smaller than life-size,
but they're pretty big.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And they're frightening.
Their mouths [? were ?] open in these ferocious roars.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's true.
They're snarling, aren't they?
DR. BETH HARRIS: They are, but the fact
that they're placed in this very regular way
makes them seem as though they're almost
trained, or controlled, by King Nebuchadnezzar himself.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It makes us fear not only the lions,
but it makes us fear the king.
The image of the lion is beautiful,
this faience raised to create a kind of relief sculpture.
So in addition to the lions, there
are two other animal forms that decorate the gate.
And they're both meant to be as ferocious as the lions.
A kind of ancient bull, known as an auroch-- these
were supposed to be terribly fierce.
And then alternating with the rows of auroch
are a kind of Mesopotamia dragon,
which is really a composite beast.
The front paws are those of lions.
The head and neck come from a snake or serpent.
The hind legs come from an eagle, perhaps.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And their tails have a stinger like a scorpion.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Those dragons are associated
with Marduk, the patron god of the city.
And Nebuchadnezzar associated himself directly with Marduk.
The aurochs-- that is, these bulls--
are associated with the god Adad, a god associated
with storms, with the fertility of the land, with the harvest.
All of these animals speak to protecting the city
but also providing for the city.
DR. BETH HARRIS: They're ferocious animals,
but they're also represented in a very regular way
along the procession, and on the tower and archway of the gate,
so that there's symmetry, a sense of order, in the way
that they're represented.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: One of the most extraordinary aspects
of these towers, of the gate as a whole, is the color.
This is an arid place where the sun is bright,
where it gets really hot.
And you can imagine how brilliant the blues
and the greens of the surface would have originally been,
not in the context of the museum,
but in the context of the edge of a desert.
In Mesopotamia, there was a real problem.
The Egyptians were able to build their great pyramids
and other monuments out of the native stone that
surrounded them.
But in Mesopotamia, they didn't have that.
This was a river valley.
Babylon is on the banks of the Euphrates.
In fact, the Euphrates cuts right through the city.
When the Mesopotamians wanted to build,
they created buildings out of brick
created from the clay of the river valley.
The brilliant blue that we see on the surface of the gate
is faience.
This is a technique that was known to the ancient Egyptians
and other parts of the ancient world.
And it uses copper to create this brilliant blue.
And this is a beautiful example.
DR. BETH HARRIS: So the gate is massive.
It's frightening.
It's decorative.
And it's brilliantly colored.
No wonder Nebuchadnezzar was so proud of it
and wrote an inscription on the side.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Let's go read that.
Now, we're not sure where the inscription was originally
placed on the wall.
But in this reconstruction, it's on the left side
of the left tower.
Here's an excerpt.
"I, Nebuchadnezzar, laid the foundation
of the gates down to the groundwater level
and had them built out of pure blue stone.
Upon the walls in the inner room of the gate
are bulls and dragons.
And thus, I magnificently adorned them
with luxurious splendor for all mankind to behold in awe."
DR. BETH HARRIS: And we are in awe
two and a half millennia later.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Nebuchadnezzar
understood his place in history.
And he actually wrote inscriptions
in his new buildings that not only identified them
and identified their purpose and him as their patron,
but also asked future rulers to rebuild them for him.
DR. BETH HARRIS: It's as though he
knew that empires come and go.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: And that he could speak across history.
And in our time, the ruler of Mesopotamia,
which we now call Iraq, seemed to pay attention.
Saddam Hussein actually had begun
the rebuilding of parts of Babylonia.
He built his own palace a few hundred meters away
from the Ishtar Gate and began the reconstruction
of parts of the city, as well.
That came to a halt, of course, in the recent military actions
against him.
And of course, he was ultimately deposed and killed.
DR. BETH HARRIS: And what it meant
to rebuild this legendary city.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Saddam Hussein was very much
rebuilding it not for Nebuchadnezzar,
but for his own political ambition.
DR. BETH HARRIS: Reclaiming the power of Nebuchadnezzar
for himself.
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right.
And the power of ancient Mesopotamia.