PHOTOS: The Art of Foreign Influence

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Archaeology Magazine
by Eti Bonn-Muller

Four millennia ago, desert caravan routes, treacherous mountain passes, and the shimmering Mediterranean Sea intimately connected the sprawling kingdoms and empires of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, and the Aegean. Goods and ideas flowed between these culturally distinct and faraway lands, not only by means of extensive trade networks, but also through diplomatic gift exchanges and booty obtained from conquests. The resulting interconnections, demonstrated by the fusion of artistic styles, are the subject of the exhibition Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C., now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The show brings together some 350 artifacts from a number of major sites—Mari, Ebla, and Byblos; Mycenae, Akrotiri, and Phaistos; and the Valley of the Kings, to name just a few—that clearly illustrate the extent to which artistic expression and craftsmanship were influenced by an increasingly international landscape.

The exhibition, a follow-up to the Met's 2003 show Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, picks up the thread in the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000-1600 B.C.), when the demand for raw materials, such as copper, tin, ivory, and lapis, sparked the development of far-reaching trade routes. Silk-screened across an entire wall at the show's entrance is a satellite map that extends from the Mediterranean basin to the Arabian Sea. No modern borders are shown on it and the one site indicated, almost perfectly centered, is Babylon, where the exhibition begins.

On a purely visual level, Beyond Babylon instantly and consistently delivers, with impressive artifacts on loan from museums and institutions in a dozen countries, including Egypt, France, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. Although most of the objects are small in size—cosmetics cases, cylinder seals, furniture inlays, inscriptions, jewelry, pottery, and weapons—they are executed in exquisite detail and often on precious materials, such as ivory, rock crystal, and gold. The first galley displays a wide array of Mesopotamian objects. A bronze statuette of a worshiper, dated to about 1760 B.C. and crafted in a workshop in the Sumerian city of Larsa (in modern Iraq), whose bearded face and tiny fingers are still covered with delicate sheets of gold, kneels to visitors at the entrance. A vivid early second millennium B.C. wall-painting fragment from the palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari (Syria), which depicts a male figure leading a bull by its golden nose-ring to a ritual sacrifice, ushers people into the next room.

While each object is a masterpiece, the show's brilliance lies in its subtlety. Gallery by gallery, visitors are confronted with artifacts whose motifs and iconography are sometimes so similar, it's easy to forget how many different sites are represented in the show, how many different artistic traditions influenced each individual piece, and how far away from each other they were produced. But of course, that's the point.

http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/babylon/

Excellent article, Many excellent pictures!

[Eurobabe]

1. Cool Adsos, thanks for that, I wrote a paper on ancient Baghdad

in grad school. Baghdad was a walled, round city, and I tied the urban planning into philosophy, Plato. My teacher loved it. It was very cool doing the research.

Of course now the city is bombed to smithereens, artifacts destroyed, etc. :mad:

[Adsos Letter]

2. Yeah...modern warfare doesn't do much for our ancient heritage...

and a Good Evening/Morning Madame to you... :hi: