Art of Mesopotamia

Mesopotamian art survives in a number of forms: cylinder seals, relatively small figures in the round, and reliefs of various sizes, including cheap plaques of moulded pottery for the home, some religious and some apparently not.

[3] Stone stelae, votive offerings, or ones probably commemorating victories and showing feasts, are also found from temples, which unlike more official ones lack inscriptions that would explain them;[4] the fragmentary Stele of the Vultures is an early example of the inscribed type,[5] and the Assyrian Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III a large and well preserved late one.

[6] The highland regions of Mesopotamia were occupied since the Neanderthal times, for example at the site of Shanidar Cave (65,000–35,000 years ago), but with no known artistic creation.

Unlike in China and the Indus Valley civilization, the villages had two economic orientations, downhill to the fields of grain and uphill into the mountains of Anatolia with their rich mines of gold and copper.

Following the Epipalaeolithic period in the Near East, several Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites are known from the areas of Upper Mesopotamia and the northern mountainous fringes of Mesopotamia, marked by the appearance around 9000 BC on the banks of the Upper Euphrates of the world's oldest known megaliths at Göbekli Tepe,[16] and the first known use of agriculture around the same time at Tell Abu Hureyra, a site from the preceding Natufian culture.

The Urfa Man found in another site nearby is dated to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic circa 9000 BC, and is considered as "the oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human".

[13][14][15] Slightly later, early human statuettes in stone and fired clay have been found in other Upper Mesopotamia sites such as Mureybet, dated to 8500–8000 BC.

[18][19] Around 8000 BC, during the following period of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, still before the invention of pottery, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as alabaster or granite, and employing sand to shape and polish.

It was broadly contemporary with such other important Neolithic sites such as Jericho in the southern Levant, Çatalhöyük in Anatolia or Tell Sabi Abyad in northern Syria.

Pottery was decorated with abstract geometric patterns and ornaments, especially in the Halaf culture, also known for its clay fertility figurines, painted with lines.

The name derives from Tell al-'Ubaid in Southern Mesopotamia, where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted initially by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Woolley.

[34][26][35] The rise of the non-Semitic-speaking Sumerian culture spans a period of about two millennia, and saw the development of sophisticated artistic traditions, as well as the invention of writing, first through pictographic signs, and then through cuneiforms.

This is a more realistic head than the Tell Brak examples, like them made to top a wooden body; what survives of this is only the basic framework, to which coloured inlays, gold leaf hair, paint and jewellery were added.

[47] Egypt–Mesopotamia relations seem to have developed from the 4th millennium BCE, starting in the Uruk period for Mesopotamia and the Gerzean culture of pre-literate Prehistoric Egypt (circa 3500–3200 BC).

The period is characterized by splendidly painted monochrome and polychrome pottery, as well as the appearance of large proto-cuneiform tablets, clearly going beyond the initial pictographic writing.

[63] This early type of net dress looks much more similar to standard textile then the later kaunakes, which looks more like sheepskin with ample bell-shaped volume around the waist and the legs.

While continuing many earlier trends, its art is marked by an emphasis on figures of worshippers and priests making offerings, and social scenes of worship, war and court life.

[71] Through Sir Woolley's discoveries we were able to understand more aspects of Ur than ever before, gaining more knowledge of daily life, architecture, art, government, and religion.

[72] These books were physical documentation serving as first hand sources of information on Ur and Mesopotamia, but also allowed for the distribution of his discoveries and widespread of Mesopotamian history.

[73] A group of 12 temple statues known as the Tell Asmar Hoard, now split up, show gods, priests and donor worshippers at different sizes, but all in the same highly simplified style.

This sombre mood ... remained characteristic of Mesopotamian art..."[82] King Naram-Sin's famous Victory Stele depicts him as a god-king (symbolized by his horned helmet) climbing a mountain above his soldiers, and his enemies, the defeated Lullubi.

Although the stele was broken off at the top when it was stolen and carried off by the Elamite forces of Shutruk-Nakhunte, it still strikingly reveals the pride, glory, and divinity of Naram-Sin.

[83][84] From the same reign, the bare legs and lower torso of the copper Bassetki Statue show an unprecedented level of realism, as does the imposing bronze head of a bearded ruler (Louvre).

[85] There is deliberate damage on the left side of the face and eye, indicating that the bust was intentionally slashed at a later period to demonstrate political iconoclasm.

[93] Some "popular" works of art displayed realism and mouvement, such as the statuette of a walking four-headed god from Ishchali, attributed to the period between 2000 and 1600 BC.

[94] The Burney Relief is an unusual, elaborate, and relatively large (20×15 inches) terracotta plaque of a naked winged goddess with the feet of a bird of prey, and attendant owls and lions.

From around 879 BC the Assyrians developed a style of extremely large schemes of very finely detailed narrative low reliefs in stone or gypsum alabaster, originally painted, for palaces.

Zainab Bahrani said that visual art in Babylonia and Assyria was not intended to simply imitate or replicate reality, the goal was to produce a representation that acted as a stand-in or substitute for the real thing.

Sumerian and Akkadian jewellery was created from gold and silver leaf and set with many semiprecious stones (mostly agate, carnelian, jasper, lapis lazuli and chalcedony).

The large variety and size of necklaces, bracelets, anklets, pendants, and pins found may be due to the fact that jewellery was worn by both men and women, and perhaps even children.