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Illustration: The Ishtar Gate
Single-line illustration from the museum’s identity guide.

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The Ishtar Gate

  • Babylon
  • c. 575 BCE · reign of Nebuchadnezzar II
  • Estimated original height 14 m · width 10 m

Engineering story

Material science: the glazed brick

Why it matters

The lesson is not the lion as symbol but the glazed brick: cobalt and copper oxides are ground and mixed into the clay in tested proportions, then the brick is fired between 950 and 1,050 °C. The even blue across thousands of bricks shows exact quality control, and the animals are modelled as part of the wall itself, not decoration applied to it.

In the documentary series12. Neo-Babylonian PeriodThe greatest city of the ancient world
On the map