Ishtar Gate’s Striding Lion: Power in Blue

Mesopotamia

Oct 25

Striding lion panel from Babylon, glazed brick relief — *Glazed brick relief of a striding lion from Babylon, symbol of Ishtar, displayed in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.*

How much power can one striding lion carry?

A single glazed-brick lion along Babylon’s Processional Way compresses a full message: Ishtar’s force, royal order, and a city on parade. Its pose reads as motion. Its blue ground turns the wall into a stage. Multiply that by dozens, and the route to the Ishtar Gate becomes a moving argument for empire.

One lion, one message: a body that reads “on the move.”

Stand in front of a panel and your eye goes straight to stride and mouth. The forepaw steps forward, the back leg pushes, the tail lifts, and the jaws open in a controlled roar. This is not a resting animal. It’s a processional body, designed to march beside you as you walk the route north of the gate. The Met’s panels spell this out: rows of lions lined the roadway to the Akītu house, guiding ritual movement and protecting the street under Ishtar’s sign.

Repetition is the amplifier. One lion says “watch.” Sixty lions say “submit.” Sources describe long walls outside the city, about 180–200 meters of ornament near the gate, where lions, rosettes, and colored bands formed visual beats for the New Year procession. The Oriental Institute and Berlin reconstructions help us rebuild that rhythm: you pass blue, lion, rosette, blue, lion, rosette, and the street becomes choreography. Order is felt in steps.

When we link the panel to the bigger monument, the message clicks. The Ishtar Gate itself carried bulls for Adad and dragons for Marduk, while the lion belonged to Ishtar. Gate and street divide the cast on purpose: gods at the threshold, Ishtar’s force along the way. The sequence teaches you how to behave. Walk straight. Keep time. Enter under watch. Compare this overview when you dive into the full gate story next.

Definition
Glaze: a thin glassy coating fused to a brick at high heat.

Wall of striding lions from Babylon’s Processional Way — Series of lions in glazed relief from the Processional Way of Babylon, now in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum.

Blue isn’t paint; it’s chemistry built to perform in light.

Up close, the panel is molded brick relief with colored glass fused on top. Craftsmen pressed clay into reusable molds, fired the bricks, then added glaze and fired again. The result is crisp relief that catches light on the lion’s mane and muscles, with a saturated blue ground that reads from far away. ISAW’s technical overview and museum entries converge on this: it is brilliantly glazed brick, not stone or paint, engineered for a grand public surface.

What makes the blue? Recent archaeometric work points to cobalt-based coloring in Neo-Babylonian blue glazes, sometimes mixed with copper signatures depending on supply. A 2019 study on the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way reliefs traces Cu–Co sourcing, while a 2024 analysis notes cobalt’s role in the deep tint that became a Babylonian hallmark. The key takeaway for us as viewers: the chemistry isn’t just pretty. It is optical engineering for sunlit walls.

Craft choices support legibility. The lion’s body often reads in white and ochre against the blue, with black for line and small details. Seams between bricks avoid cutting through eyes or teeth. Borders of rosettes and bands keep your gaze moving forward. Viewed in Berlin’s reconstruction or in single panels in Chicago and New York, you can see how these micro-decisions scale up to a street designed to be read at walking speed.

Myth vs Fact
Myth: The blue is lapis lazuli set into the wall.
Fact: It is glaze colored by cobalt (often with copper traces), fired onto molded bricks.

Parade logic: the route teaches power.

Why stage lions on the outside street and the dragons-bulls on the gate? Because the route itself is a ritual machine. UNESCO and museum guides emphasize the Processional Way as the spine of the New Year festival: statues emerged from the city, passed the gate, and traveled this corridor. The lions don’t just decorate; they escort, making royal and divine presence feel continuous in space and time.

Scale does the quiet work. Even a single panel is almost a meter high by over two wide; on the wall, multiplied by dozens, the lions become the architecture’s tempo. You and I would feel it as a steadying beat: paw, paw, paw. In that rhythm, “Babylon” becomes an experience more than a label. ISAW’s account of brickwork and relief, together with the Met’s notes on procession and protection, let us read the lion as moving signage—a message you must walk to understand.

How much power can one lion carry? Enough to set the pace for a city’s biggest ritual and to fix a color—this blue—into our memory whenever we say “Babylon.”

Roaring lion relief from Nebuchadnezzar II’s throne room, Babylon — Close-up of a roaring lion from Babylon’s palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, representing divine power and protection.

From Babylon to Berlin and New York: what reconstructions reveal.

Most of us meet the lion in museums, not on a street in Iraq. Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum rebuilt a section of the gate and way using thousands of original fragments set into a modern structure. The show makes the scale and sequence visible again, even if the modern context removes heat, dust, and festival noise. The Met and the Oriental Institute display single panels, which is a different lesson: look close at craft, joints, and glaze. Both experiences matter. One restores procession, the other making.

Reconstruction of Babylon’s Processional Way with striding lions — View of the Processional Way of Babylon in the Pergamon Museum, lined with lions in glazed brick relief.

Conclusion: A city that walks beside you.

The striding lion condenses a city’s voice into one moving image. Pose equals motion. Blue equals presence. Repetition turns a wall into a parade partner. Put it together and Babylon doesn’t just tell you it is powerful. It walks that power alongside you. For the full monument, step into our gate overview, then explore why the blue works, and finally trace the Processional Way as a designed ritual route.