Particularly important to Koldewei’s excavation at Babylon were Ishtar’s door, decorated with glazed bricks.
On February 4, 1925, Robert Johann Koldewey, a German archaeologist who celebrated the excavation of the remains of Babylon, died. He was born in the city of Blankenburg in 1855, about 175 km southwest of Berlin.
Koldewey began archeological digs in 1882, in the early thirties of his life. He came to Mesopotamia at the turn from 1897 to 1898, at a time when the area belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The remains of Babylon, a large ancient city, extensively excavated by Koldewey, are located in what is now Iraq, some 80 kilometers south of Baghdad and about 15 kilometers from the present-day Euphrates River. In fact, Babylon is located between the Euphrates and Tigris streams, with the present-day Tigris stream about 55 kilometers away from the Babylonian excavations.
Particularly important to Koldewei’s excavation at Babylon were Ishtar’s door, decorated with glazed bricks. Interestingly, the door was reconstructed at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin from material excavated by Koldewey. In the area of Mesopotamia, Koldewey operated for as long as 18 years, until the area was occupied by the British in World War I. Koldewey died in his native Germany, in Berlin in 1925. He was in his 70s at the time of his death.
