Ishtar Gate and Processional Way
Once per year, the Ishtar Gate and connecting Processional Way were used for a New Year’s procession, which was part of a religious festival celebrating the beginning of the agricultural year. In Babylon, the rituals surrounding this holiday lasted twelve days. The New Year’s celebrations started immediately after the barley harvest, at the time of the vernal equinox. This was the first day of the ancient month of Nisan, equivalent to today’s date of March 20 or 21.[9]
The Processional Way, which has been traced to a length of over 800 meters, extended north from the Ishtar Gate and was designed with brick relief images of lions, the symbol of the goddess Ishtar (also known as Inanna) the war goddess, the dragon of Marduk, the lord of the gods, and the bull of Adad, the storm god.[15] Worshipped as the Mistress of Heaven, Ishtar represented the power of Sєxual attraction and was thought to be savage and determined. Symbolized by the star and her sacred animal, the lion, she was also the goddess of war and the protector of ruling dynasties and their armies. The idea of protection of the city is further incorporated into this gateway design by the use of crenelated ʙuттresses along both sides to this entrance into the city.[9]
Friezes with sixty ferocious lions representing Ishtar decorated each side of the Processional Way, designed with variations in the color of the fur and the manes. On the east side, they had a left foot forward, and on the west side, they had the right foot forward. Each lion was made of forty-six molded bricks in eleven rows.[10] The lion is pictured upon a blue enameled tile background and an orange coloured border that runs along the very bottom portion of the wall. Having a white body and yellow mane, the lion of Ishtar was an embodiment of vivid naturalism that further enhanced the glory of Babylon’s Procession Street.[15][16]
The purpose of the New Year’s holiday was to affirm the supremacy of Marduk and his representative on Earth, the king, and to offer thanks for the fertility of the land.[9]
The Processional Way was paved with large stone pieces set in a bed of bitumen and was up to 66 feet (20 meters) wide at some points. This street ran from the Euphrates through the temple district and palaces and onto the Ishtar Gate.[17]
The front of the gate has a low-relief design with a repeated pattern of images of two of the major gods of the Babylonian pantheon. Marduk, the national deity and chief god, with his servant dragon Mušḫuššu, is depicted as a dragon with a snake-like head and tail, a scaled body of a lion, and powerful talons for back feet. Marduk was seen as the divine champion of good against evil, and the incantations of the Babylonians often sought his protection.[9]
The second god shown in the pattern of reliefs on the Ishtar Gate is Adad (also known as Ishkur), whose sacred animal was the aurochs, a now-extinct ancestor of cattle. Adad had power over destructive storms and beneficial rain. The design of the Ishtar Gate also includes linear borders and patterns of rosettes, often seen as symbols of fertility.[9]
The bricks of the Ishtar gate were made from finely textured clay pressed into wooden forms. Each of the animal reliefs was also made from bricks formed by pressing clay into reusable molds. Seams between the bricks were carefully planned not to occur on the eyes of the animals or any other aesthetically unacceptable places. The bricks were sun-dried and then fired once before glazing. The clay was brownish red in this bisque-fired state.[10]
The background glazes are mainly a vivid blue, which imitates the color of the highly prized lapis lazuli. Gold and brown glazes are used for animal images. The borders and rosettes are glazed in black, white, and gold. It is believed that the glaze recipe used plant ash, sandstone conglomerates, and pebbles for silicates. This combination was repeatedly melted, cooled, and then pulverized. This mixture of silica and fluxes is called a frit. Color-producing minerals, such as cobalt, were added in the final glaze formulations. This was then painted onto the bisque-fired bricks and fired to a higher temperature in a glaze firing.[10]
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[11][12] symbolizing her divine power. Once captured by the queen of the underworld, Inanna is described as being lapis lazuli, silver, and wood,[13] 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” linking the gate to being part of the Goddess herself.
After the glaze firing, the bricks were ᴀssembled, leaving narrow horizontal seams from one to six millimeters. The seams were then sealed with a naturally occurring black viscous substance called bitumen, like modern asphalt. The Ishtar Gate is only one small part of the design of ancient Babylon that also included the palace, temples, an inner fortress, walls, gardens, other gates, and the Processional Way. The lavish city was decorated with over 15 million baked bricks, according to estimates.[10]
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.[14]
