Ishtar Gate
Artist unknown
575 BC · Pergamon Museum, Berlin
Bulls and dragons stride across glazed brick in deep blue, raised for Nebuchadnezzar around 575 BC and rebuilt from the original bricks in Berlin.
★ 9.0
Browse by time · century
6th century BC
600 BC – 501 BC
Showing 28 works across all media from the 6th century BC
The Book of Songs
Author unknown
600 BC · 400 pages
Three hundred and five songs from ancient China about courtship, harvest, soldiers on campaign, and bad government. Confucius taught from them, and every Chinese poet since has written with them in earshot.
★ 7.2
Aesop's Fables
560 BC · 87 pages
Talking animals carry the moral instruction the West grew up on: the tortoise outlasts the hare, the fox decides the grapes were sour. Aesop was a slave, and the lessons show it.
★ 7.1
If Not, Winter
Fragments of Sappho
600 BC · 416 pages
Western love poetry starts with Sappho, and starts at full pitch: the tongue breaks, thin fire runs under the skin. The poet Anne Carson brackets every gap where the papyrus tore.
★ 6.7
1st Kings 19:11-12
538 BC
★ 3.7