We walked through ancient Babylon’s gate one day.
It’s now located in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.
They call it the Ishtar Gate.
We visited the museum shortly after I taught a Bible study on the subject, but I didn’t know exactly what this gate was.
Travel guru Rick Steves told us to stop in and marvel. I didn’t pay attention to why.
I stepped into the corridor and stopped in my tracks, my mouth dropping open.
Lions roamed the gate and the hallway.
This was Daniel’s gate!
Nebuchadnezzer II (604-562 BC) built it.
Why is Babylon’s gate in Berlin?
(Wikimedia Commons)
German archaeologists found it and shipped it home.
According to information in the museum,
At the very beginning of the evacuations in Babylon in 1899, the architect Robert Koldeway’s attention was drawn to pieces of broken blue-glazed bricks. Subsequently, evacuation were started in the area of the city in which they appeared particularly frequently.
Pergamon Museum
They found a jumbled pile of the glazed tiles and after negotiations with the then-Ottoman Empire, shipped the first batch back to Berlin in 1903.
500 crates worth of broken tiles, carefully marked from where they found them, followed suit after World War I.
The rebuilding of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate and Processional Way in Berlin was one of the most complex and impressive architectural reconstructions in the history of archaeology.
Hundreds of crates of glazed brick fragments were carefully desalinated and then pieced together. Fragments were combined with new bricks baked in a specially designed kiln to re-create the correct color and finish.
Wikipedia
Or, “like a 2500-year-old Babylonian jigsaw puzzle,” Steves wrote in his Germany guidebook.
This exhibit is only the smaller front gate. Because the other half of the double gate is too big to display, they stored it in a museum warehouse.
The site is located in modern-day Iraq.
Lions everywhere!
I love seeing lion statuary all over the world, especially in Europe.
But, the thought that this was a gate through which the Old Testament prophet Daniel must have walked, overwhelmed me.
Imagine, walking down a long corridor, lined with lions, to enter the grand ruler’s citadel. And then later, meeting the despot’s lions in person!
Daniel and his Jewish friends Shadrach, Meeshah, and Abednego were young men taken from Jerusalem to serve the Nebuchadnezzar. The book of Daniel tells their story.
I wanted to touch a glazed tile, marveling Daniel could have seen or touched one, too.
I knew better, of course, but the beauty mesmerized me.
The dust from the Israelites, and other prisoners, touched these tiles more than 2500 years ago. How could that be?
That’s the reason history and the Bible can feel so very close.
Or, as Calvary Chapel Santa Barbara teaching pastor David Guzik said in his audio commentary on Daniel 5, “Don’t you love it when the Bible confirms archaeology?”
Pergamon Museum presentation
The museum does a fine job of showing how the gate appeared in Babylon.
Several displays show what the gate looked like in place, particularly the processional walk.
The Ishtar Gate was only one Babylon gate of eight total.
11 miles of wall surrounded Babylon and 200,000 people lived there.
The gate stood 46 feet tall and 100 feet wide. The processional way stretched as far as half a mile.
Other than an American Space Shuttle which I saw in Los Angeles, this is one of the largest indoor museum exhibits I’ve ever seen.
But, what happened when I walked through the gate?
Rome!
Tweetables
Astonishing: the OT prophet Daniel walked through this gate. Click to Tweet
Visiting ancient Babylon’s most beautiful gate in Berlin. Click to Tweet
Very exciting, Michelle! Especially since my church Bible study group just finished studying in the book of Daniel.
We’re studying Daniel, too, which made me remember this visit. I’m still amazed I saw the actual gate.