Jeff Allen & Ahmed Abdelgawad - Conservation of the Ninmakh Temple at Babylon, Iraq

This lecture will be hosted on Thursday, 30 October 2025 at 6:00 pm.

Located in the ancient city of Babylon, near the Processional Way and the iconic Ishtar Gate, the Ninmakh Temple was reconstructed several times during the reigns of Esarhaddon, Assurbanipal, and Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century BCE. Dedicated to Ninmakh, the mother goddess of ancient Mesopotamia, the temple was first excavated by Hormuzd Rassam in 1880, re-excavated by the Robert Koldewey Expedition (1899–1914), and later reconstructed by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1960s.

During Saddam Hussein’s Revival of Babylon project in the 1980s and 1990s, the Ninmakh Temple served as a model for several temple and house reconstructions. Despite these late twentieth-century interventions and subsequent years of neglect and partial collapse, the temple retains significant original fabric, preserving much of its authenticity and integrity.

The presentation at the NVIC will examine the five-year conservation effort to stabilize and rehabilitate the Ninmakh Temple and its adaptive reuse for special events. For sixteen years, the World Monuments Fund has been engaged in conservation efforts at Babylon through the Future of Babylon Project, which has included documentation, condition surveys, conservation planning, physical interventions, and support for the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in securing Babylon’s inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

About the Speakers

Jeff Allen is World Monuments Fund’s Senior Program Director for the Future of Babylon Project.
Ahmed Abdelgawad is World Monuments Fund Consultant Earthen Architecture.

Attention!

The lecture starts at 6 pm. The number of seats is limited and we work on a first-come, first-served basis. We open our doors at 5:30 and close them at 6:15 or earlier in case the lecture room reaches its full capacity.