~ The Lions of Babylon ~
This is part of a project by luxury scarf retailer OSHEQ, Dubai, UAE. I was commissioned to produce illustrations for 3, and I concentrated on the importance of Heritage in the Middle East by attributing a city to each scarf. This is The Lions of Babylon, the other two scarves are titled The Guardian of Aleppo and Beirut (check them out on my portfolio!).
The Babylonians are most famous nowadays for the Tower of Babylon and their Hanging Gardens, both unrealized myths most probably never existed. The jewel of Babylonian architecture, however, is non other than the Ishtar Gates and its processional way. Made of glazed blue bricks and depicting bulls, dragons, and lions, the gate was accounted by ancient travelers to be shining in the sunlight from miles away. Thankfully, the gate has been restored in Berlin, but nevertheless, it stands tall as one of Ancient Iraq’s iconic representations of one of its most powerful civilizations. The lion, a symbol of the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar, represented power, strength, and agility, and is depicted on this scarf as a universal symbol of Iraqi Heritage, now heavily at risk of being wiped out.
