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Virtue & Power

Museum

Pergamon Museum

Holder of the reconstructed Ishtar Gate, built from bricks excavated at Babylon and shipped to Berlin between 1899 and 1917.

Berlin, Germany · founded 1930 in its present building

Scope

Near Eastern, Islamic and classical architecture and sculpture.

History of the collection

Robert Koldewey excavated Babylon for the German Oriental Society from 1899 to 1917, recovering the glazed brick of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way in tens of thousands of fragments, which were shipped to Berlin and reassembled over decades.

Collection notes

What stands in Berlin is the inner gate only, at reduced scale, built from original bricks with modern infill. It is a reconstruction, and the platform captions it as one.

Contested holdings

Recorded because a collection description that omits a live claim is not describing the collection. The platform states the dispute and does not adjudicate it.

  • The Ishtar Gate material

    Claimed by: Iraq

    Acquired under an Ottoman-era permit before the modern Iraqi state existed. Iraqi officials have periodically raised the question of return. No settled legal claim is before the museum, and the platform records the situation without adjudicating.

Objects in this catalogue