Ishtar 0, The Gate


Shortly (in geological terms) before the crappy 80s movie, Ishtar also had a gate named after him. A bit more successful than the film, it was one of the 7 wonders of the world, with the smaller, inner gate standing 15m (47 ft) high and the larger gate 30m high. The walkway lined with similar walls made of blue tile was 100m wide. This sounds meh, but it's impressive. Especially when you realize what a colorless wasteland it was sitting in: Babylon (Assyrian for "Ass of the Earth". Other than palm trees and the various Israelite being burned (Daniel & co.), there was no color in Babylon. In fact, they didn't even have a WORD for color*.

Get thee to Berlin and see the gate for thyself. It's in the Pergamon museum which is filled with an amazing amount of non-German ancient art. It's amazing they had enough time to start (one of them jointly with France) two world wars last century when they had the entirety of the Ancient World to loot.

* They might've, but it sounded good and I was too lazy to look it up.