Ishtar Gate

Aurochs and dragons, molded in relief, stride in rows across walls of glazed brick in deep lapis blue, gold, and ochre. King Nebuchadnezzar II raised the gate around 575 BC as the eighth and grandest entrance to Babylon, dedicating it to the goddess Ishtar on the city's Processional Way, which lions in the same technique lined for hundreds of meters. Excavated by Robert Koldewey between 1904 and 1914, its smaller front section was rebuilt from the original bricks inside Berlin's Pergamon Museum, where it fills an entire hall.