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The History of Art Survey
Lecture 3
Ancient Art of the Fertile Crescent
=Gardner 16-39
A Protoliterate ...............3500-3000 BCE ......Assyrian Empire ................900-612 BCE
B Early Dynastic ...........3000-2300 BCE .....Neo-Babylonian Kingdom ..612-538 BCE
C Akkadian Dynasty .....2300-2150 BCE .....Achaemenid Empire ...........538-330 BCE
D Third Dynasty of Ur ..2150-2000 BCE .....Greco-Roman Period ..330 BCE-224 CE
E Old Babylonian 1900-.1600 BCE ...............Sasanian Dynasty .............224-636 CE
F Hittites / Elamite 1600-1000 BCE

2-
1 White Temple and ziggurat, 3200-3000 BCE Uruk
2 Reconstruction of the White Temple and ziggurat Uruk
3 Female head (Inanna?), c 3500-3000 BCE, 8”, marble Uruk
4 * Presentation of offerings to Inanna (Warka Vase) 32-3000 BCE Uruk
5 Statuettes from the Temple of Abu, 2700-2600 BCE Tell Asmar
6 Seated statuette of Urnanshe, Ishtar t at Mari, 26-2500 BCE Tell Hariri
7 Fragment of stele of Ennatum, Girsu, 26-2500 BCE, 6’ Telloh
8 * War (above) peace (below), Standard of Ur, 8x19”, c 2700 BCE Ur
9 Lyre (from King’s Grave) Royal Cemetery, 2600 BCE Ur
10* Soundbox, Lyre (from King’s Grave) Ur
11 Cylinder seal and impression, c 2600 BCE, 2” Ur
12 Head of Akkadian ruler, 12”, c 2200 BCE Nineveh
Slat 2-1 Disk of Enheduanna, Daughter of Sargon, c 2300 BCE, 10” Ur
Disk of Enheduanna, before its restoration
13 Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, c 2200 BCE, 6’ 7” Susa
14 Ziggurat, 2100 BCE Ur
15 Seated statue of Gudea, c 2100, 17” [Lagash]
* Gudea,
16* Stele with law code of Hammurabi, c 1780 BCE, 7’ 4” Susa
17 Investiture of Zimri-Lim, Palace of Mari, 1775-60 Tell Hariri
18 Lion Gate, Boghazkoy, c 1400 BCE, lions 7’ (Anatolia)
19 Statue of Queen Napirasu, c 1300 BCE, 4’+ Susa
20 Reconstruction of citadel of Sargon II, c 720 BCE Khorsabad
21 Lamassu, citadel of Sargon II, 14’- Khorsabad
22 Assyrian archers pursuing enem, pal of Ashurnasirpal II, c 875 Nimrud
23 Ashurnasirpal II with attendants and soldier, 875-60 Kalhu
24 Ashurbanipal hunting lions, p of A, c 650 BCE, 5’ h Nineveh
25 Dying lioness, det., Palace of Ashurbanipal, c 650 BCE, 16” Nineveh
26 Ishtar Gate, (restored), c 575, Babylon
27* Apadana & stairway, palace of Darius I, c 500 BCE Persepolis
28 Palace of Shapur I, c 250 CE Ctesiphon
29 Head of a Sasanian king (Shahpur II?), c 350 CE, 16” [Persia]
30 Triumph of Shapur I over Valerian, c 260 CE Bishapur

The Ancient Near East
(Noticing the Western Perspective in the term: it’s east of the Greeks.)

19th century museums of the great European capitals filled with the are of the ancient “Near East.” Mesopotamia means the land between the two rivers (the Tigris and Euphrates of mod. Iraq) where the Fertile Crescent (stretching from Iran to the sea through mod. Iraq, Syria and down coast to Egypt) begins and largely stays centered.

This was the period during which the great powers of western Europe, particularly France and Britain, were colonizing (conquering and coercing) the region. And so the most important imagery that has not remained in Iraq is mostly in the Louvre and the British Museum.

Archaic Civilizations
Proto-literate Culture 3500 - 3000 BCE
Civilization is a rich term whose central meanings relate to the orderly and advanced life developed in cities. It is the product of agricultural surplus that frees enough people from subsistence labor to devote time to specialized activities that result in craft (technical) innovation, social innovation and trade that makes living in larger communities possible and the multiplication of these innovations that come out of these larger communities. Villages yield towns and eventually cities and so states: larger collectives under integrated rule.

The first civilizations appeared in river valleys where relatively light alluvial soil made agriculture particularly efficient with wooden plow. The archaic civilizations that emerged were only possible because of the success of the Neolithic revolution. They can be considered the archaic revolution.

The technical revolution that seems most crucial to this development is the development of writing. Writing makes possible communication on a larger scale geographically and chronologically. Ideas can be shared and, over time, refined. A standard belief is that cities, writing and bronze preceded Iron and empire.

Sumerian Art 3500 - 3000 BCE
The cultures following the Neolithic are given different names. Chalcolithic is one, it is the stone plus copper period. The important shift in human culture marking the end of the Neolithic era and a revolutionary new stage of human existence is the coming of writing and so history, and the full complex of cultural forms is conventionally called civilization.

With writing come a set of connected cultural developments, the most important being the gathering of large numbers of people together in multicultural states and cities with complex economies that allow for stunning specialization —and so the refinement and development— of social relations and crafts (including the visual arts). Writing and picturing make possible records and so refinement from person to person and generation to generation of concepts. Neolithic people recognized the change of the seasons and have left objects notched to indicate counting the days of the phases of the moon. Mesopotamian cultures recognized a calendar of 12 lunar months a year, plus an added month every three years.

At the same time we see associated developments including iron smelting and the domestication of horses and vastly developed local, regional, and long distance trade, and state controlled large scale irrigation.

With cities we see the development of not only compound settlements, but monumental architecture. With cities we see a shift in visual imagery from animal subjects to human subjects. And with large scale cultural communities we see the creation of widely shared traditions: shared alphabets is one example, shared styles of depiction are another.

Writing is found first in Mesopotamia, and develops in three stages:

c 3400 - 3000 BCE pictographs (mostly scratched in soft clay rt.-left
c 3000 - 2400 BCE shifted toward wedge formed abstractions cuneiform phonograms representing syllables.
c 700 Late cuneiform reaches its peak of abstraction as an alphabet. developed cuneiform writing with developed complex grammar

These are mostly economic records, but including a literature with work such as the Epic of Gilgimesh.

Sumer is a collection of city states ruled as a theocracy, by priests claiming to act as stewards for gods, who are the actual rulers. Agriculture, crafts and trade are taxed by the priests.

Architecture

It requires legal authority to control settlements larger than the smallest villages, to maintain streets and traffic flow, to police social interaction.

As soon as we move from villages of a few to towns of writing, trade and towns of hundreds, we find rectilinear layouts —known earlier but indulged irregularly— becoming the dominant form. This is true wherever such civilizational advance takes place.

And as soon as there are cities there are clearly distinguished hierarchical class divisions, with the more powerful creating structures that demonstrate elite power with monumental architecture.

Hegemonic texts disguise the power differentials of society as implicit realities rather than explicit ones. As their essential claim is that we exist now in social harmony and agreement in an unchangeable set of relations, they tend to avoid issues of class contested power in the past or to treat them very carefully. Thus Gardner describes the emergence of monumental architecture as if it were just the creation of impressive structures. Those interested in social disequlibrium feel, by contrast that one must recognize those giant structures as the exclusive property of the elite, not as representative of the society as a whole, the vast majority of which was never allowed near them. But rather, confronted with them as proof of their own inferiority before the gods, and so their priests.

1 White Temple and ziggurat, 3200-3000 BCE Uruk

A mud brick mountain of human construction (likely raised over a natural outcrop)
A ziggurat is a stepped platform: Here a tall basement for a small temple
It is conceived of as a waiting room for “Anu the sky god”
It had an elaborate entrance stairway
Its corners were oriented to the cardinal directions

The base has battered (slanted) walls, common for mud brick
Its basic forms are rectilinear, the layout form that both allows and demonstrates control. The shape that can be thought most effectively.
The stairway ran around three sides of the platform
The cardinal directions are a product of the course of the celestial bodies and the rectilinear axes. (Interest in celestial bodies, especially the sun and moon are clearly recorded in the Paleolithic moon cycles and Neolithic structures like Stone Henge.)

Do notice our text writes “god” in the lower case for all those outside the hegemonically recognized Abrahamic, Semitic religions of Judaism Christianity, and Islam. Here are “Greek gods and goddesses” but the “Ten Commandments [come] from the Hebrew God” who is capitalized.

2 Reconstruction of the White Temple and ziggurat Uruk

The straight sided walls of the temple itself are reconstructed here from its rectilinear layout and the elevations rendered in relief depictions elsewhere.
It was likely open to the sky

3 Female head (Inanna?), c 3500-3000 BCE, 8”, marble Uruk (mod. Warka) (Baghdad Museum)
Inanna (later called Ishtar) is the goddess of love and war.
There has to be more to this
It isn’t clear if this is the goddess or her priestess
this is a stone [armature] fragment of an image fully developed in mud, wood, plaster or some other material. Drilled holes reveal the existence of the tool and the means by which the head was attached to a body.

Eyes, eyebrows, and a wig were to be attached. as grooves show.

It is important to note that much of what remains to us as art in our museums is only fragmentary remains —the bare bones— of fully developed works of art, we’ll note this as we go on.

4 Presentation of offerings to Inanna (Warka Vase)
32-3000 BCE 3’ Uruk (Baghdad Museum)

Early (first?) narrative picture: depicting a festival of offerings to the goddess
relief in alabaster [marble]. Registers: water / barley & flax / rams & sheep / naked male bearers / priests making offering.

A less naive, more concrete reading in McNeill’s Rise of the West (39) New Year festival with “the goddess...shown receiving the gifts from her human slaves, whose destiny is is to server her, just as it is the destiny of the plants and animals show at the bottom of the base to serve the wants andneeds of mankind. In the center, men beraing gifts for the goddess complete the dchain of being as the ancient Sumerians conceived it. The vase therefore portrays the essentiail structure of a Sumerian temple community.”

The image reveals a careful composition with devices like:
division into registers, a ground line, consistently maintained (rule-based) figure
This is an established style [already]
It is a conceptual style
with rules of figure repetition and perspective: e.g., no overlapping
there is hierarchy of scale: more important figures are larger.

Alabaster, like other sorts of marble, is a fairly soft stone, of quite uniform, small grained texture that takes fine detail in carving.
Esthetic style is already fully developed and consistently applied as if long in existence: It involves repetition of conceptual symbols and composite figure types in a consistent and regular visual pattern: two levels of silhouetted relief with rounded edges. There is strikingly rhythmical repetition of textures, outlines and forms.

This is one of the pieces looted in the wake of the American invasion of 2003. Its remains turned up in Germany in late June in 15 pieces. The market for such looting is in the cities of wealth, mostly in the “west.” there were 9,000 pieces still missing according to the July 6th ‘03 news item I heard. According to some others only two dozen or so were actually taken.

Royal Cemetery at Ur Early Dynastic period 3000 - 2300 BCE
Abraham’s city in Old Testament.
Rulers were buried here with their servants.

5 Statuettes of the Temple of Abu, 2700-2600 BCE Tell Asmar (Univ of Chicago)

Found buried in temple (waiting room) floor.
Perpetual worshippers holding offerings and pose of offering
gypsum and inlay, the tallest is 2’6:
beards, belts with fringed skirts, large eyes, cylindrical mass
not a personalized portrait but a type
often inscribed with name of donor and deity addressed
hierarchically sized by importance

Donor portraits persist in Christian art through 18th century in Europe
Gender distinction in dress and figure representation

6 Seated statuette of Urnanshe, Ishtar t at Mari, 26-2500 BCE Tell Hariri 10”
Lapis lazuli eyes -this material from Afghanistan
beardless, legs crossed, long straight hair = court canter and (a eunuch)
held instrument [lyre?] now lost

7 Fragment of stele of Ennatum (Stele of the Vultures), Girsu,
2600 -2500 BCE, 6’ Telloh (Louvre)
Scene fragment of warfare and conquest
a stele is a stone slab, standing upright on its own
Victory of Ennatum over the ensi (ruler) of Lagash
Ennatum as leading infantry and in chariot
hierarchical scale
historical event

Most Fertile Crescent elite imagery that is not of religion, is of hunting or war
note a horse drawn, wheeled vehicle.

8 War (above) peace (below), Standard of Ur, 8 x 19”, c 2700 BCE Ur (British Museum)
These two panels were the two sides of a box. The imagery is in wood, stone, lapis lazuli and shell, inlaid into a wood ground.

War ...stripped captives presented to the king -larger, at the center
foot soldiers gather defeated foe
war chariots mow down soldiers, asses speedup as moving on

Peace ...seated banquetters, inc. king, lyre player + eunuch canter
attendants w/animals for banquet
figures with war booty

9 Lyre (from tomb 789, the king’s tomb), Royal Cemetery, 2600 BCE Ur (U Penn. Mus)

wooden box w/gold, lapis inlay

10 Soundbox, Lyre from the king’s tomb, 12”, 2600 BCE Ur
animal fables still popular.

human headed bulls flanking hero in heraldic fashion
animals with gifts: dog w/dagger and bodies for meal
ass playing bull-headed lyre, jackal w/zither, bear dancing
scorpion man & gazelle w/goblets.

composite figures in heraldic pose

11 Cylinder seal and impression, c 2600 BCE, 2” Ur
Cylinder seals were tools for personal identification

that combined both of the visual arts functions.] They communicated to anyone who could recognize them the ownership of the items they were stamped upon. Those who could read the script could get information the illiterate could not, but anyone who could read the pictures could tell whose property they were. They were also items of prestige or attractiveness: decoration. They were drilled to facilitate wearing them and so not only keeping track of them but also display. The were often made from handsome and unusual stones, which the working with intaglio pictures that produced relief images was quite striking. People enjoy looking at pictures.

lapis seal from tomb 800 (Pu-abi’s)
drilled cylinder seal
2 registers: banquet for a more important personage.
intaglio cut to make raised impression in wet clay.
rolled out to identify owner’s property or signature. e.g., on trade-goods.
buried with owners

We can learn a good deal from this one and from the great number that have survived. Some with long inscriptions carried important documents. [Most ?] included pictures which also tell us things. Here, that [at this time ? and place?]men of different classes went unshaven. There is also here some use of presentation being made. More important seated figures are flanked by less important standing ones. There is a table with presentations here like the one on the lyre from the King’s tomb: with an X below and offering on top.

The large numbers of these seals found and the quality of the work expended upon them are an indication of the importance of trade in Sumerian culture. The nexus of writing, commerce, individuality and population density is expressive of the weave of cultural forms that were joined to create civilization.

Akkadian Art 2334 -2150 BCE

The Akkadians who conquered Mesopotamia for a century and a half, stood out from the rulers who preceded them as speaking a distinctly different language. It was Semitic, related to the Hebrew and Arabic, but of a different set of languages altogether than that of the Sumerians.

Sargon (true king) of Akkad created the new rule by uniting several city states under his power (2334- ). He defined it as his power, not the god’s.

The difference in languages point up the multicultural reality of the Sumerian world. People there lived together while maintaining distinct cultural communities. In the Neolithic and in later small scale, pre-literate societies tribal societies, people live in groups that share a single language.

Sargon’s empire is the first documented example we have of city states expanding into an empire including several regions into a larger state.

12 Head of Akkadian ruler, 12”, c 2200 BCE Nineveh (mod. Kuyunjik, Iraq) (Baghdad Museum)
This is a hollow-cast, copper object, intended for mounting on a body of a less precious material. Its missing eyes were inlays of precious materials, gouged out by those who plundered it. It is remarkable for the rich patterns that cover its relatively life like form: repeated decorative geometry on the had and headband and in the depiction of the beard.

The great beard is a prominent marker of the wearer’s royal power. As it the fact that the entire piece is made of copper, which would have been extremely expensive.

The smelting and working of copper was one of the revolutionary technical feats of the Neolithic period. The Archaic revolution brings us elaborate and refined uses of metal on a much wider scale. Copper was the first metal so developed. Though by the Archaic, silver, gold, tin and zink were all know, and even early uses of iron.

Slat 2-1 Disk of Enheduanna, Daughter of Sargon, c 2300, 10” (Univ. of Penn. mus.)

With the leap from Neolithic tribal life to the village and city communities of the Archaic civilizations, women’s roles in society were greatly diminished. If today’s surviving tribal cultures and the records we have of the past are any guide, these are largely egalitarian social communities with a good deal of what has been called “primitive democracy.” However rudimentary their economies and their technology and despite their distinct division of labor, there is relatively equal access to social goods and power. There is no class of significantly greater wealth or access to food. Clan decision making and religious leadership is shared by both genders.

If hazards of childbearing and hunting may balance themselves in the Paleolithic, this may change in the Neolithic. Life expectancy in the much more controlled environment of the Archaic period is estimated at 25 years in general, and is distinctly shorter for women, because of the trials of childbirth.

This changes greatly in the larger communities of the Archaic world. Here there are distinct class hierarchies, ruled by military elites and served by large enslaved classes as well as lowly commoners. And here there is distinct subordination of women. Women are essentially the property of the men in their families. Though as the representatives of their families, upper class women have more power than lower classes of males. We may read this differential in short hand through strict laws against adultery that also fully accept concubinage.

The Disk of Enheduanna reveals some of this situation, if paradoxically, due to the subject’s status as the daughter of the ruler.

The inscription on the reverse of the disk reads “Enheduanna, priestess of the Moon god, [wife] of the moon god, child of Sargon, the king of the universe, in Ishtar’s temple of Ur. She built [an altar] and named it...Offering Table of Heaven.”

The relief depicts a ritual in which Enheduanna makes an offering through an officiating priest at an altar set up before a ziggurat. She is shown second from our left, backed up by two more priests. The operating priest pours water from a cup while Enheduanna and the two behind her gesture in greeting to the deity. She is the tallest of the group and wearing the tufted-garment of royalty. The last figure in line seems to carry a vessel. All but her seem to have shaven heads.

Enheduanna was a politician, writer of hymns and prophet. As writer of known hymns, she was the first recorded author. But the fact is, in all these roles she is recognized as the daughter of Sargon. It is much the same situation as we find today in such female political leaders as Indira Gandhi or Megawati Sukarnoputri. They gained their prominence through their roles as the heads of the families of male political figures. They may show us that women can well be quite as effective politicians as any male, but this does not reveal a society where women have an equal role with men. In the case of the art of the Fertile Crescent, only one sixth of the images in our canon contain women at all and these are goddesses or daughters of the royal family.

2-1 Disk of Enheduanna before restoration
A brief look at the Disk of Enheduanna as it appeared before the restoration that has produced its current form is quite striking in its differences from the piece displayed in Slatkin’s photo, and displayed in the exhibition Art of the First Cities, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2003. The importance of the piece can be gathered from its being chosen for these publications and displays. The fact of its restoration, both painstaking in physical detail and in the intellectual decisions that went into the conceptualization of the restorations shows us something about how historians assemble the complete pictures they transmit to us from what is often the most fragmentary of evidence.

There is nothing in the restored disk than cannot be justified by the most careful scholarship, and yet there is a great deal of assumption and estimation. Take the last figure in line. In the actual remains t here was nothing visible of this figure but a bit of the vessel and the arm holding it. Or take the first, universally described, as Slatkin does, as nude. Evidence is there, but not much. There is some evidence for such four storied altars or towers as seen on the far right, but not much of it here.

As a professional historian, I know the history one has access today is based on fact and carefully studied logic that is constantly being refined. It is not just opinion. It has been carefully crafted over generations, sometimes hundreds of generations. But it is also at best a best case analysis of sometimes quite insufficient evidence for the conclusions we draw from it.

13 Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, c 2200 BCE, 6’ 7” Susa (Baghdad Museum)
This stele is an upright stone, carved to commemorate the great king Naram Sin’s victory over the Lullubi.
Naram sin is the King of the 4 quarters, Sargon’s grandson (2254-2218)
There are two inscriptions on the stone. One of N-s’s and one by the king who took the stone as war-booty a thousand years later (in 1157).

It show N-S at the top of a mountain, his soldiers marching in formation below, his foes are shown submitting and fleeing in disarray. Hierarchy of scale is distinct as it the king’s horned helmet. He is shown in conversation with three celestial bodies

Possibly most interesting to the historian of art, the figures are shown in a setting, not as abstracted figures.

You can read much sculpture better in black and white than in color, though color brings out other aspects of the work.

By now (in this book’s selection of images) we can see how they Summering had evolved a consistent pattern for representing people: a composite figure, made up of typical conceptual views: most of the body in profile, but shoulders show frontally to reveal both arms; faces in profile, but eyes frontal. There are also a consistent vocabulary of dress items to identify roles: male and female dress, hats, beards and so on, based undoubtedly on the cultural codes of actual life. There are the codes of depiction or style: Relief is about 50% raised from surface within boxy, closed silhouettes. Gestures are parallel to the surface and the viewer. Figures are raised roundly but maintaining the essential form of the original block. There is careful attention to rhythmical linear outlines of major forms and rich surface patterns.

These aren’t schematic diagrams of information, but richly attractive visual forms and patterns that enhance our interest in their messages. As poetry is to prose and carefully conceived prose is to information, these renderings are of great visual interest in the manner of their production, beyond their instrumental significance, though that instrumentality is also of great importance to their value.

Neo-Sumerian Art 2150 - 2000 BCE
The Guti, who conquered the region from the Akkadians, were Sumerian-speakers from, or centered in Ur.

Our text in this chapter offers us several thousand years of culture, changing across time in one geographic location. Cultural continuity is marked by shared culture as well as space. Not just the verbal languages, but other prominent and constitutive cultural patterns, such as technological crafts and visual imagery and religious traditions are maintained.

Ziggurat, Ur, c 2100 BCE
The platform here is 50’ high and much larger than the White Temple’s.
It is composed of unbaked, mud-bricks, surfaced in baked-bricks set in bitumen (tar). Baked-bricks are a more labor-expensive material, but a more impervious one that takes a much more cleanly articulated form. We see three monumental stairways of entrance.

We can see the visually interesting break up into projected and receding vertical layers. These have no structural function, but give the form rhythmical articulation.

15 Seated statue of Gudea, c 2100, 17” [Lagash] (Baghdad Museum)

There are around two dozen stone sculptures of the Gudea of Lagash surviving from the Neo-Sumerian period.
They are inscribed. E.g., “I am the shepherd loved by my king. May my life be prolonged” and “Gudea the builder of the temple, has been given life.”
This one is shown seated.
The right shoulder is bare.
Nearly [?] all show this hand gesture of supplication to the deity.
This one shows the plan of the temple he built, in his lap.

These are a good example of how most works of art —then to now— are variations on rather limited sets of visual patterns. These figures all look so much alike that once you’ve seen the two I’ll show in this course you can identify the others and recognize the particular style as 1: distinct from others and 2: a coherent set that belong grouped together.

All are carved in largely cylindrical blocks of diorite, a very hard, volcanic stone that takes an find polish. Some are seated with symmetrical legs, some are standing.

GT Standing Gudea (British Museum)
I am specialist in the art of India, and so very interested in this particular period of Fertile Crescent art. The Neo-Sumerians of Ur were in direct and constant trade with the earliest ancient civilizations of South Asia, the Indus Valley or Harappa Civilization. Indians sent them fine wood, lapis lazuli, finely crafted biconical carnelian beads and peacocks —luxury items. Cylinder seals of this period have been found at Persian Gulf way stations and in Indus sites. Indian stamp-seals have been found in the cemeteries of Ur, that and also written records of the trade.

At the end of the course when we spend two lectures on India, we will see examples of these stamp-seals (Gardner 6-2) and a rare figurative survival (6-1) with striking similarities to these Gudea figures. I have spent much of my career studying how cultural ideas circulate, particularly those often misunderstood as influences travel. So this imagery is important to me.

In comparing this image from the British Museum with that from the Louvre we can see what the style has in common. We can also see what the missing head of the Louvre image would have looked like. And later we can compare this style with the related imagery found in India.

The head of the B. M. Gudea is a compact globe dominated by convex globular forms, bulging eyes, cheek bones and chin, rhythmically echoing the whole. It is rigidly and geometrically symmetrical. The expression is solemn. He is clean shaven. The shoulders, pectorals and biceps continue the rhythm. The off the shoulder robe—freeing that arm from the robe for activity. Most striking are the linear rhythms of the fingers which so eloquently speak of the supplication of the royal steward of Ur to their gods.

My point in this study is to bring my particular interest and understanding to a particular work that is part of the hegemonic canon. I’ll continue with more of what I learned in the later lecture, but at this point you can already use my interest to see how stereotypically standardized is the Gudea form and also—with that familiarity—recognize the precise control the Neo-Sumarian artists of Ur exercised over their imagery. The rigidity of symmetry, closed compactness of the silhouettes, the sharpness of the linear patterns, and the simplifications of natural forms into simple rhythms. Enjoy the ripples of fingers and toes, and the cloth at two the fold points.

Familiarity with the style allows you to appreciate the sensitivity of the art. [I here use my favorite definition and one of the two universal ones, the one that predates bourgeois ideology: sensitive skill of rendering.

Old Babylonian period 1900-1600
Yet another conquest by one militarized ruling class over another.

It is most important to recognize that, despite the major implicit assumption of hegemonic text writers, the most important aspect of this art for us is the aesthetic continuity among these works that reveals the continuing cultural traditions of the region. Art history texts tend to emphasize the innovation that marks and contours this tradition, and so the individuality of particular dynasties or kings in the elite and then to treat this individuality as exemplary of the societies as a whole. The continuity is expressive of the culture of the people as a whole, the variations are more a characteristic of the change over time. It is the extreme luxury of materials and care rendered in the craft plus the particular symbolisms that bespeak the elite.

16 Stele with law code of Hammurabi, c 1780 BCE, 7’ 4” Susa
a Stele is an upright stone (Baghdad Museum)

Hammurabi (r.1792 - 1750 BCE) ruled at Babylon.
This image is in black basalt (another hard, polishable volcanic)
It too was carried off to Susa in 1157 as booty.
Hammurabi is shown receiving the laws from the sun god, in the form of a measuring rod and line.
Hammurabi is shown standing.
The god, Shamash, is shown with flaming shoulders and horned helmet.
There is a suggestion of foreshortening perspective in the Hammurabi’s rt shoulder and angled fingers.

Most prominent on the stele is the pictorial claim of receiving the code from god.
Most instrumental is the code itself, engraved below, with its penalties for crimes of that day, such as murder, theft and adultery. A thousand years before the first written law of the Greeks and closer to the time of the Old Testament laws of the Jews, we get a written law code in 3,500 lines of cuneiform Akkadian. Eye for an eye is literal fine here. [In the Old Testament it a limit, not a requirement.]

You will notice both that slavery is an accepted practice and that women are object of concern, but not subjects. “A man’s wife” is “a man’s slave” or “his eye”, of interest. Women were of value, but not the beings either addressed in the code. The code was written by, to and for men.

It is also distinctly redolent of the class hierarchy that characterises the archaic as contrasted to the Neolithîc world. In the Neolithic band there are few possessions and these are relatively equally shared. There are few artifacts to be hoarded and almost no way of storing food. But in the archaic city there is real wealth to be divided up and small elites rule large numbers of commoners and slaves. In Hammurabi’s code members of the elite receive lighter punishments than commoners for the same crimes and crimes against members of the elite are punished more severely.

Hittite Art 1600 - 1000 BCE
Interesting to most Americans as familiarity from the Bible, the Hitites are also of interest to historians as the first recorded speakers of an Indo-European language. The inscription at Boghaskoy mentions the god Ouranos, later appearing in both India and Greece.

18 Lion Gate, Boghazkoy, c 1400 BCE, lions 7’ (Anatolia)
Lion flanked entrances is a very familiar sight from this point on.

This should remind us that what we are looking at here are not necessarily the most esthetically moving, but the most esthetically important of human artifacts. The ambivalent and ambiguous qualities of beauty and visual quality are not issues here, but a variety of possible social characteristics that lead to fame. This is, after all, the photo of a grossly vandalized pair of images, however fine they may once have appeared. But, they mark the earliest example of an important “type” and the location of a very interesting inscription.

Elamite Art 1600 - 1000 BCE
The rise of Susa, the Biblical Elam c. 1350-

19 Statue of Queen Napirasu, c 1350 BCE, 4’+ Susa (Baghdad Museum)
This is a solid bronze core and copper outer shell, inscribed with the wish that the gods maintain it in place. It is a votive image with the familiar cylindrical outline and crossed hands.

One of the great technical triumphs of the archaic was to blend copper with small amounts of zink and tin to produce bronze. Bronze is much harder then copper and so holds it shape against both the elements and other materials, making it a stronger metal than copper for both the arts and warfare.

Assyrian Art 900-612 BCE
The Assyrians conquered more vastly than any before, all the way from Mesopotamia to, and including, Egypt. They depicted themselves as merciless.

20 Reconstruction of citadel of Sargon II, c 721-705 BCE, Dur Sharrukun (mod Khorsabad)
This is a square mile of palace complex, within a bastioned defense wall
surrounding a 50’ high royal citadel of 25 acres and 200 rooms.
[rectilinearity and symmetry rule
“I built a city with(the labor of) the peoples subdued by my hand...”
There is a ziggurat with six separate sanctuaries for six gods over 6 stories, each of a different color, 18’ in height, along a spiral ramp.

21 Lamassu, citadel of Sargon II, 14’- Khorsabad (Baghdad Museum)
Colossal, human headed, winged bulls
Corner turning reliefs of 5 legged animals, to satisfy composites from two sides
Very finely crafted in a strong form with richly patterned surfaces

The British sunk most of those they found, by accident, while trying to take them away to sell them to museums in the early 19th century. You will find survivors in several US locations as well as the European ones. Whoever who had the money when they were available.

22 Assyrian archers pursuing enemies, palace of Ashurnasirpal II, c 875-60, Nimrud, 3’ (British Museum)
Warfare and hunting scenes are the most common subject of Assyrian art
These are gypsum, [a relatively soft stone that takes fine detail]
There is a very effective narrative portrayal of marshal exertion.
Low relief and rhythmical patterns: more raised-drawing than modeling
Here archers pursue the king’s enemies back to their fortifications.
There is an arrow in the back of one swimmer, inflated animal skins with two

There is a shift in scale to indicate perspective distance, though no other optically intuitive perspective.

24 Ashurbanipal hunting lions, p of A, c 645-40 BCE, 5’ h Nineveh (British Museum)
The hunt with the king shown as martial hero
A controlled hunt, with transported lions.
King protected from behind, though only he is allowed to kill lions.
We see the Assyrian characteristic of emphasizing muscles to show power

This is the sort of royal marshal propaganda that we still see with our military-service-evading-president landed on an air craft carrier in pilots dress.

There is also more of this perspective by scale

25 Dying lioness, det., Palace of Ashurbanipal, c 645-40 BCE, 16” Nineveh (British Museum)

Hers is the most famous example of this Assyrian style, that is the most evocative and so the most often reproduced.
It is comparable to the first gulf war’s image of a burnt body in a military vehicle.

There is fine observation, established style and great expression

Neo-Babylonian 612-538 BCE

26 Ishtar Gate, (restored), c 575, Babylon (Berlin)
Glazed tile facing over a brick structural core.
The dark blue ground has raised, yellow images of Marduk’s dragon and the bull of Adad on the gate and lions on the walls leading to it.
The military crenelations above are called merlons.
There is an arched passage way.

This is important to us, though hardly ever noted by the hegemonic surveys, for its display of the monumental use of a radiating arch and vaulted ceiling. There is a major interest in vaults in the hegemonic survey, as important evidence of Rome’s —and hence “the West’s”— scientific and technical enginuity. Indeed arches, vaults and domes are among the more ingenius and esthetically pleasing elements of all architecture. This has been so from the Ninteenth century’s European elaboration of architectural history. It was only at a later point in the development of this historical literature that it became clear that such vaults were known earlier in “the East.” And the result has been the contradictory interest in the supperiority of Rome accompanied by an ignorance of earlier and parallel development of the forms in earlier and parallel civilizations.

An arch provides a means of leaping a space larger than the 17 foot (physical) limit of a stone lintel. It is an engineering based on wedging stones together to support those above. In the earliest examples a simple semicircular form is almost universally employed, but pointed arches are possible and occur as early.

The earliest preserved stone arches and vaults are found in the King’s chamber of Kafre’s pyramid at Gizeh. They are both found commonly in the mud brick storehouses of Ramses II’s mortuary temple at Thebes around 1260 BCE. The vaulting in Neo-Bablyonian structures such as the Ishtar Gate, are closer in date to their first appearance in Europe in the Etruscan walls of Perugia’s Ponte Augustus.

Achaemenid Persian Art 538-330 BCE
This is the next gigantic empire of conquest, that by 440 BCE extended from Iran to Afghanistan in the south and west to Egypt and into Europe as far as the Balkans.

We know of it best in European history for its inability to conquer the Greeks
We should see it as a tribute collecting military elite, not a centralized, law providing government.

It was the conquest and partial expansion of this region’s elite that created the equally superficial, but much more transitory empire of Alexander

27 & Plato’s caveApadana (audience hall) & stairway, palace of Darius I, c 521-465 BCE Persepolis
Originally a fortified palace complex, raised by Alexander.
The Apadana is a 200’ square audience hall under a 50’ wooden roof, supported on a stone framework.

[Plan of palace]

Subjects bringing gifts to the king, Apadana, c 500 BCE Persepolis
The walls of the platform show the main ritual that takes place in the Apadana, the annual delivery of tribute from the empire’s 27 vastly dispersed satrapies.
We see a procession of the regents of each region, led by guards, in their national dress with their characteristic national commodities

Our text points out that “Some of the details, notably the treatment of drapery folds, echo forms characteristic of Archaic Greek sculpture, and Greek influence seem...to be one of the ingredients of Achaemenid style.” It is unfortunate that this element is not illustrated, and I doubt it interpretation. This, is one of my particular interests and a major aspect of the survey meaning.

How much culture outside “the West” can be traced to “the West” and how little of “the West” can be traced beyond.? As your book says, “The impact of Egyptian and Near Eastern art on Greek art of the previous century was so strong that art historians commonly apply the term “Orientalizing” to this period of Greek art (Chapter 5).” This impact of Greeks at Persepolis “testifies to the active exchange of ideas and artists among all the Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations at this date.”

My own understanding leans recognizes sharing of this sort more than one way “influences.” We should read with this model of sharing versus influence in our minds.

In my own observations I sought out the tribute bearers from South Asia, those from the Satrapy of Kandahar (Kandahar, in mod Afghanistan)

Sasanian Art 224-636 CE [note the dates of the modern era, which we will take as the “common era”, CE. Once we are done with the divided period, we will leave off the indicator.]

This is the dynasty that ruled the region during the later Roman Empire and up to the Arab conquest. It is interesting to note that at the Arab conquest, the rulers ran for support to their nearest royal peers, the Emperors of China with whom they had important trade and cultural relations.

28 Palace of Shapur I, c 250 CE Ctesiphon
A monumental brick palace in the form called an Iwan, a barrel vaulted opening porch at its center.
This pointed arch reaches up 30 yards. It is the model a 1000 years later for mosque courtyards.

This seems like a mistaken understanding to me.
The region near east is region with abundant clay and little available stone and this is visible in all we have seen.

29 Head of a Sasanian king (Shahpur II?), c 350 CE, 16” [Persia] (Met, NYC)
life sized head
repoussé, sheet metal pushed out from behind,
and engraving and mercury gilding

30 Triumph of Shapur I over Valerian, c 260 CE Bishapur
A relief in the “living” rock of a natural cliff, in a monumental scale.
Roman soldiers are depicted underfoot and bowing in defeat
“cherub-like figures from Greco-Roman art with a garland.”

There is a detailed inscription next to this. As usual the two forms of record stand in parallel: writing and picturing.

Some conclusions It is important to note the focus in the historical period has moved from animals to people. It is also important to note how styles are the result of cultures with traditions. The figurative style here, like the writing signs, express a consistent set of patterns that can be and were learned and repeated generation after generation. Such consistent style use comes from cultural continuity of traditions. It is not one artist copying another, but entire cultures accepting and perpetuating visual patterns as they do spoken ones (language) and lived ones too. As late as the Apadana at Persepolis we have formal patterns of carving (repeated silhouettes marching in low relief) and symbolisms (winged horses & etc.) established thousands of years earlier, continuing in use..

Artists work, and are understood by us, through the creation of unique statements in shared formal languages and cultural traditions