Mušḫuššu (the Ishtar Gate dragon)

The dragons belong to the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BC), who rebuilt the city. The Ishtar Gate, one of the eight gates into Babylon, was nearly five storeys tall and stood on the Processional Way, the ceremonial road into the city; the Detroit Institute of Arts describes it covered in millions of vivid blue tiles, glazed bricks that formed the images of its animals. On its walls bulls and dragons alternate, Koldewey reported: never mixed in one row, a row of bulls is followed by a row of dragons, each animal thirteen brick courses high with eleven plain courses between them, and only on the parts of the wall a passer-by could see. The Processional Way beyond was lined with lions. Koldewey matched each animal to a god. The lion was Ishtar’s, the bull belonged to Ramman, the weather god, and the dragon was the sacred animal of Marduk and of his son Nabu, as on seals and boundary stones of the time.

The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin say their department of Near Eastern antiquities was founded that year after the coloured bricks of the gate and the Processional Way were found, and that the gate, the Processional Way and Nebuchadnezzar’s throne room now stand along the central axis of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, their dark blue walls decorated with the lions, bulls and dragons of Babylon’s chief gods.