The Dragon on the Ishtar Gate
On the great blue gate of Babylon, a scaly beast with a serpent's head and an eagle's claws marches alongside bulls and lions. The man who dug it up wondered if it was real.
What was reported
The Ishtar Gate was built by King Nebuchadnezzar II as the grand entrance to Babylon. Its glazed blue bricks show rows of animals in relief: lions, bulls, and a strange creature, the mušḫuššu, with a scaly body, a horned serpent's head, a lion's front legs and an eagle's back feet.
Robert Koldewey, the German archaeologist who excavated the gate in the early 1900s, noted that the creature was drawn with the same realism as the real animals beside it, and wondered whether the Babylonians had seen something like it.
Explanations offered
The mušḫuššu was the sacred beast of the god Marduk, a creature of myth like the griffin. Cryptozoologists later linked it to the Mokele-mbembe of Central Africa, but historians see it as a symbol. Much of the gate was reconstructed in a museum in Berlin.
- When
- Built about 575 BCE
- Where
- Babylon, Babil, Iraq
- Witnesses
- Archaeologists, and visitors to Babylon and Berlin
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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