Ishtar’s Gate and ancient Mesopotamia

I arrived in Berlin last week, and first on my list of activities was to visit the Pergamon Museum! There’s an island in the centre of the city which has several museums. Not surprisingly, it’s called Museum Island.

Many years ago, German acheologists began digging up shards of blue baked stone, and shipped them back to Berlin, where they pieced together the remnants of a gate built by Nebuchadnezzar II.

From the ancient shards  they reconstructed three  types of creatures; a lion, a bull, and a curious beast referred to as a dragon, with the head and body of a snake, talons of a raptor and the forelegs of a lion.

The lion is a primary symbol of Ishtar, for whom the gate is named, the bull is of Adad, the weather god, and the dragon is the national deity “Marduk”.

When piecing the wall back together, the archeologists had to recreate a large part of the bricks in order to display the size of the gate. You can see the difference in the bricks that are old vs new by way of the faded colour, and all the cracks showing from the reconstruction. Also found amongst the ruins were cuneiform inscriptions chiseled into the wall.

Inside the museum were several more exhibits, the most famous being the Altar of Zeus. I was very excited to see the Altar of Zeus, but it’s under construction! It’s been under repair for 4 years now, and the host told us it was expected to be under repair for about 4 more! My sister, who lives in Berlin and is familiar with how long everything takes to get done, assured me that if they say 4 years of construction, that it really means 6.

Sooooo, no altar for a while it seems.

HOWEVER, there are still interesting things about the altar that I wanted to share with you. 

As a student of the bible this piece of history is particularly interesting. The reason comes from the book of revelation. 

Revalation 2:12-13

 “And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.

 “‘I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.’”

The figure of Zeus is not usually thought of as Satan, but to read the text and know that his altar is there is a little bit too much for coincidence. It raises a lot of entertaining speculation on the dynamic between the gods of Olympus and what’s written in the Hebrew bible. 

One more thing to add to that, which hopefully will send you, dear reader, hurriedly scurrying down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and ancient philosophies, is that one of the activities that Zeus was notorious for was coming down to earth and making babies with human women. So I submit to you a portion of Genesis 6, verses 1 to 4:

“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”

Here are some pictures from Assyria, maybe related, maybe not even close. But cool, old, and awesome.

The last picture that I’m going to share with you is Roman architecture, also found in the same area, but from hundreds of years later. Please excuse the chronology of my post, as Assyria existed first, then Babylon (Ishtar’s gate), then Medo-Persia, Greece, and finally Rome. 

Behold!