Mar Shiprim is glad to offer to its readers an insight into another exhibition on ancient Mesopotamia which can be visited in New York. Anastasia Amrhein and Elizabeth Knott have kindly agreed to describe to us the exhibition, which they curated (together with Clare Fitzgerald) at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
‘A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate’, which will be on view until 24th May 2020, takes the visitors on a journey through different and original aspects of Babylon’s iconic Ishtar Gate and Processional Way.
A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate
An exhibition at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
November 6, 2019–May 24, 2020
By Anastasia Amrhein and Elizabeth Knott, co-curators
For the next six months, some 150 brightly-colored large- and small-scale artifacts from across the ancient Middle East, together with raw materials in various stages of workmanship, as well as archival watercolors, sketches, and photographs associated with the excavations at Babylon, will be on view in New York City at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. This diverse assemblage of objects—on loan from nine national and international institutions—seeks to tell the story of the creation of Babylon’s iconic Ishtar Gate and Processional Way from a Mesopotamian point of view. ISAW is a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education, which aims to encourage the study of the economic, religious, political, and cultural connections between ancient civilizations.
Reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate façade, by Friedrich Wachtsmuth (1912 CE)
Watercolor on paper. H. 51.4 cm; W. 69 cm
Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Berlin: ArDOG V.29.100
© Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Archiv; Photo: Olaf M. Teßmer
Who was responsible for the design and construction of this celebrated monument? How were the molded and glazed bricks of the Gate formed and assembled? What meanings did the constitutive materials of the Gate carry? And how did workmanship and specific craft techniques and processes alter or enhance these existing material values? Taking the gleaming glazed brick fragments of the Ishtar Gate that were uncovered during the early 20th century excavations as a point of departure, this exhibition highlights the sacred materials and sacred skills responsible for generating the wonder that came to characterize this monument in antiquity.
Installation view of shipping crate with glazed brick fragments from A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, 2019. Image © Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Photo: Andrea Brizzi
In the late 1800s, when German archaeologists began to explore Babylon in earnest, all that was left of the ancient city were mounds of clay ruins with fragments of colorful glazed bricks scattered across the surface. Excavating the twenty-meter-high mounds, archaeologists and workmen, led by Robert Koldewey, began to reveal the fragmentary remains of the molded and glazed walls of the Ishtar Gate and its affiliated Processional Way, as well as an earlier, still in-situ phase of the Gate that featured molded but unglazed baked bricks. The glazed fragments filled nearly 800 crates, which were eventually shipped to Berlin and used to create the nearly full-scale reconstruction of the monument in the Pergamon Museum. Today, the Ishtar Gate can be experienced both in Berlin as well as at the original site of Babylon in Iraq, where the unglazed earlier phase of the structure still stands. The present exhibition—specifically designed for the intimate setting of a small exhibition space—allows visitors to interact with the remains of this iconic monument in a deconstructed fashion, by exploring ancient ideas about the transformative power of the processes of craftsmanship and the capacity of clay and vitreous materials to act as points of access to the divine world.
Installation view of brick and watercolors showing fitters’ marks from A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, 2019. Image © Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Photo: Andrea Brizzi
While excavators faced the challenge of piecing together broken fragments, ancient builders undertook an equally, if not more, complex task in constructing the Gate itself. The original process relied on a hidden system of symbols known today as fitters’ marks. These signs, indicating the vertical and horizontal placement of each brick, were applied to the tops of the bricks as the preliminary composition was dismantled. Each brick was subsequently glazed and fired before being re-assembled to form the final form of the monument. This ancient system of bricklaying was studied at Babylon by the archaeologist and architect Walter Andrae, who later played a central role in reconstructing the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way in Berlin. Andrae created drawings and watercolors—some of which are on view in the exhibition—both in the field at Babylon and later in Berlin. Such works utilize the Gate’s fragmentary remains to imagine how its final building phase may have looked. By returning to the Gate’s constituent fragments and charting the process of reconstruction, the exhibition highlights the ingenuity of the ancient monument.
Brick stamped with cuneiform inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II and incised with alphabetic workers’ inscription (zbn’).
Neo-Babylonian Period (reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 604–562 BCE)
Baked clay; Probably from Babylon, Iraq. Overall: H. 40.8 cm; W. 36.8 cm; D. 10.8 cm.
The British Museum, London: 1979,1220.64
CC0 1.0 Image courtesy of The British Museum
While we frequently associate great building works with the rulers who commissioned them—in this case, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604–562 BCE)—these projects required the collaboration of many scholars, architects, craftspeople, and laborers. In the ancient Middle East, the people responsible for formulating the layout, iconographic program, and material composition of the Ishtar Gate were more than skilled technicians: along with religious specialists, they were among those members of society—known as ummānûs, or “experts”—who had knowledge of, and access to, the primordial past. Although the names, working conditions, and social status of ancient Middle Eastern architects, craftspeople, and workers are largely unknown to us, their legacy is evident in the works that continue to inspire awe today. Beginning in the brickyards of Babylon, the transformation of ubiquitous clay into a glittering gateway was a complex, decades-long endeavor requiring innovative design, the management of a large shifting workforce, and the coordination of hundreds of people from across the empire. Bricks from Babylon—stamped with the cuneiform inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II, but also inscribed with short writings in the Aramaic alphabet—gesture to the many individuals involved in royal construction works and convey a sense of the immense organizational system that facilitated Babylon’s rebuilding.
Installation view of a lion panel from Babylon’s Processional Way in A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, 2019. Image © Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Photo: Andrea Brizzi
Nebuchadnezzar II describes Babylon’s city gates as awe-inspiring monuments, designed to be appreciated by all the citizens of, and visitors to, Babylon.
“I filled those gates with splendor for the wonder of all people”—Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604–562 BCE)
Mold for a female figurine. Middle Elamite Period, ca. 1500–1100 BCE
Molded baked clay. From Susa, Iran. H. 19 cm; W. 8.5 cm; D. 3 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Antiquités orientales: Sb 7413
© RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Photo: Franck Raux
Statements like Nebuchadnezzar II’s show that people in the ancient Middle East were deeply aware of the transformational nature of enlivened architecture, and part of the current exhibition charts the development of molding and glazing technologies as they relate to the decoration of architectural façades. Babylon’s Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, erected in the middle of the first millennium BCE, represent the culmination of centuries of technological development and religious thought from across the ancient Middle East. Displaying a panel of the Ishtar Gate alongside Elamite, Kassite, Assyrian, and Achaemenid architectural elements, the exhibit highlights the various ingenious and visually striking ways in which ancient Middle Eastern architects and builders augmented and enlivened mudbrick constructions.
Conceptions such as the meaning of craftsmanship and materials differ across cultures. Our modern understanding of the relative value of materials tends to privilege stone over glass and clay. In the ancient Middle East, however, materials derived value from their mythological associations, aesthetic qualities, and behavior in the hands of craftspeople. Research by art historians studying the ancient Middle East has especially demonstrated the importance of understanding ancient attitudes towards materials, both worked and unworked. For the most part, these studies have focused on precious metals and gemstones, although more recently, a handful of scholars have also begun to investigate ancient Mesopotamian notions of clay and vitreous materials, which to our eyes seem more mundane. The second gallery of the exhibition elaborates upon this research and presents these media as ritually powerful and efficacious substances that were used in a variety of magical rituals alongside stones and metals, as well as to activate the protective function of architecture. Clay was the original creative material that constituted both gods and humans, and was thus fundamentally vital. Vitreous materials such as glaze, glass, faience, etc. were associated with magical transformation and alchemy. Working these materials, and subsequently interacting with objects fashioned from them, allowed the ancient Mesopotamians to access and direct divine agency to their own ends. The use of clay and glaze, as active materials linking the human and divine worlds, would have lent further protection to the Ishtar Gate and the sacred city of Babylon.
Installation view of case with minerals used to make glaze, blue glazed brick fragments, and Egyptian glass vessels from A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, 2019. Image © Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Photo: Andrea Brizzi
Materials made of glass visually reference gemstones such as agate and lapis lazuli. All of these media—stones as well as glass, glaze, faience, frit, and Egyptian blue—were classified as na4 (usually translated as “stones”) in ancient cuneiform texts and were imagined to be of equal value. Experimentation with glass-like substances began in the mid-second millennium BCE, leading to considerable innovations by the time of Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign, thus facilitating the creation of the brightly-colored glazed bricks that decorated the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way. The complicated recipes for vitreous materials required precise combinations of ingredients as well as kiln conditions, temperatures, and firing and cooling times. However, the recipes also included chemically superfluous ingredients, which suggests that the manufacture of glazes and related materials was understood in alchemical terms, likely requiring divine intervention.
While Babylon’s Ishtar Gate is one of the best-known icons of the ancient world, the gleaming façade of the reconstructed monument often outshines the complex craft processes, potent materials, and religious thought that enabled its construction and activated its “wonder.” Returning to the excavated fragments of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, A Wonder to Behold emphasizes that the protective powers of the Ishtar Gate emerged through the ritualized interaction of a multitude of craftspeople with the materials of clay and glaze.
A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate is on view at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) from November 6, 2019 through May 24, 2020. ISAW is located at 15 East 84th St, New York, NY, 10028, and the galleries are open Wednesday–Sunday, 11am–6pm, with extended hours on Fridays (open until 8pm).
The exhibition is accompanied by extensive programming that brings together working artists, conservators, curators, art historians, archaeologists, and text specialists to discuss and elaborate upon various aspects of the exhibition.
Further information about the exhibition, including events and related scholarship, can be found online at https://isaw.nyu.edu/exhibitions/ishtar-gate.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (available through Princeton University Press), which explores the themes of the exhibition in greater depth through a series of essays by Anastasia Amrhein, Heather Baker, Jean-François de Lapérouse, Eduardo Escobar, Anja Fügert, Sarah Graff, Helen Gries, Elizabeth Knott, Katherine Larson, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Shiyanthi Thavapalan, and May-Sarah Zeßin. We are especially grateful to these scholars and the lending institutions for their collaboration and generosity in sharing their objects and ideas with us.