Mushhushshu-dragon, Symbol of the God Marduk

I'm Katherine Kasdorf, Associate Curator of Arts of Asia and the Islamic World at the Detroit Institute of Arts. We're standing here in the DIA's Gallery for Arts of the Ancient Middle East in front of the Mushhushshu panel from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon.

The Ishtar Gate was part of the city's processional way constructed during the reign of King Nabu-kudurri-utsur,  between 604 and 562 BCE, and it was built to impress. An inscription on the gate compares the gleaming blue bricks to lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, and says that the gate's animal designs were adorned with luxurious splendor so that people might gaze on them in wonder. This animal known as a mushhushshu is a type of dragon that is associated with Marduk, who was the main god of the city of Babylon. Other animals on the Ishtar Gate included lions associated with the goddess Ishtar and bulls associated with the god Adad. From their position on the Ishtar Gate, all three of these animals were believed to protect the city.

The word mushhushshu means “furious serpent,” but the creature's body is made of the parts of different predatory animals. It has the head of a snake, complete with a forked tongue, and the scaly body of a snake too. Its front legs come from a lion with powerful claws, and its back legs are those of an eagle with sharp talons, and at the end of its tail there's the stinger of a scorpion.

In this panel, the body of the mushhushshu is slightly raised from the backdrop in low relief. The bricks that form its body were molded before being glazed and fired. About 90 bricks would've been needed for a panel of this size, but for the entire Ishtar Gate, it's estimated that some 2 million bricks were used.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, a team of German archeologists working with archeologists in Iraq excavated the parts of the Ishtar Gate and they very carefully cleaned them, brought them together, and, using those parts, reconstructed a good portion of the Ishtar Gate, which is now in a museum in Berlin called the Pergamon Museum, as well as panels like this mushhushshu, which are now preserved in different museums across the world. We're so lucky to have this panel here in Detroit. It's one of our 12 Artworks to Inspire. This mushhushshu panel is one of the most important works in our gallery of the ancient Middle Eastern art here at the DIA, and even though it's from the 600s to 500s, BCE, thousands of years ago, it's actually one of the more recent works in the gallery. So as you explore, I hope you'll feel inspired and connected to the ancient people who made and encountered these objects in the past.