If these descriptions will enable the reader to picture to himself the accumulation of masses of towered defensive walls that guarded the entrance to the Citadel, he will realise that it could hardly have been possible to construct a more imposing approach to this ancient gateway than this one, with its gradual ascent between the walls of the Procession Street, decorated with the long multi-coloured rows of lions, up to the Ishtar Gate and through that to the actual Bab-ilani.
XXIX
RETROSPECT OF THE KASR
The gradual raising of the buildings on the Kasr and their development into the Acropolis of Babylon may be classified in their principal features under the following periods:
1. The wall of the river bank built by Sargon. Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, the walls connected with it, no longer exist.
2. Nabopolassar’s palace of mud brick on a foundation of burnt brick, surrounded by an enclosing wall which included the irṣit Babil and to which the arched door belongs. Building of the Arachtu walls in three successive periods.
3. Nebuchadnezzar replaced the mud brick of his father by walls of burnt brick, restored the enclosing wall, built the older moat wall, and renewed the Ninmach temple of Sardanapalus.
4. Building of the two mud walls, which may prove to be Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, and in which stood the ancient Ishtar Gate, which no longer exists.
5. Building of the east part of the Southern Citadel. Raising of the enclosing wall, of the Ninmach temple, and of the Procession Street.
6. Rebuilding of the Ishtar Gate with the brick reliefs, and heightening of the two mud-brick walls.