GLORIES OF BABYLON

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11404, 3 January 1931, Page 9

GLORIES OF BABYLON

BERLIN’S NEW MUSEUMS.:

TWENTY YEARS’ TASK

The centenary of Berlin’s “Museum Island” was celebrated on October 2 by' the opening of three new museums upon it, the result' of 20 years’ planning and building, much interrupted and delayed by the war, the revolution and the inflation. The three new museums are, not in fact entirely new separate entities, and have not separate entrances of their own. The portico and entrance hall of what is to be their principal facade have not yet been built, because until ' the new apentrance hall of what is to be their approach has been constructed over the Spree, which the present state of municipal finances forbids, they could not be approached. from this side.

At presen,t, therefore, the German Museum, the Pergamon Museum, and the Near Eastern Museum are links joining the Kaiser Frederick Museum at one end of the island to the Nones and Altes Museums at the other end, so that the whole complex of buildings is united by bridges over the streets, and the Metropolitan Railway lino which divides them.

The new museums conceived by the late Wilhelm. von Bode, are superb examples of the new German school of museum.arrangements. The aim is to show painting, sculpture and architecture in their original In-ter-relation.

A REMARK A BLE COLLECTION

In the German Museum have been concentrated all the German sculptures and paintings, in the Berlin collections from the early Middle Ages to the end of the Eighteenth Century. This will prove a revelation for many visitors from England, where knowledge of German art is too often confined to Purer and Holbein. The early medieval sculpture and the glories of German rococo art are both given a proper emphasis.

But it is the Pergamon and Near Eastern Museums which contain the greatest, surprises. In enormous halls whole monuments and facades have been reconstructed. Thirty yards of the processional street—originally 300 yards long—which led to the Ishtar Gate of Nebuchadnezzar IPs palace have been reconstructed, though only half the original 50ft in width. On either side of the visitor lies the shimmering blue glazed walls of ancient Babylon with their lions and legendary monsters. The gateway itself has been built up in its entirety according to the excavations *of Koldewey in 1899. Opposite to it rises the facade of a Parthian palace of the second century A.D. The wall of Babylon stands back to back with the Roman-baroque market gate of Miletus, second century A.D. In all these reconstructions it should be emphasised there is no falsification. The original portions of the building—in the base of the Miletus Gate practically all the sculptured details, and even s ome of the ashlars which, make up the plain wall spaee —are clearly but discreetly distinguished from the rest-.

THE GREATEST TREASURE. The greatest treasure of the museum is the Pergamon .Altar built by King Eumenes 11. in 180 B.C. This has a huge room to itself. The original altar was on a mount 32 feet high, girt with a sculptured frieze representing the war of the Olympian gods with the giants. Half the building has been reconstructed with a great flight of steps sweeping up to the colonnade which ran round the sanctuary. Some of the frieze can, therefore, he seen in its original architectural setting and the rest of it runs , round the room. The steps shocked the Government building inspectors because they are 2in. higher than the municipal regulations allow, but the museum authorities manfully refused, to mar their re-creation of an architectural masterpiece by adding iron railings for the weak-kneed to cling to or coyering the steps • with rough-surfaced, linoleum.