Art of the Ancient Near East

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First matter first ….

The BBC'sHow Art Made the World (aired on PBS in America)is a thought-provoking five-part series, of which part 3 – "The Art of Persuasion" – is particularly useful for the beginning of an art history survey class.

Yous tin can use it in a number of ways depending on the size of your course and the length of time/frequency per calendar week yous meet. You might wish to show the first ten minutes at the end of the lesson and have students watch at home on Netflix, or to accept a "movie screening" in class (bringing popcorn can help brand things feel festive) and watch with guided questions.

In this episode, Dr. Nigel Spivey uses the 2004 election campaign of George Bush-league to explore the mode in which art and compages have been used to propagandize powerful figures since fourth dimension immemorial. Spivey's 4 instance studies hit four keys areas in the early part of the fine art history survey – Stonehenge (Prehistory), Darius the Dandy and Persepolis (Ancient Almost Eastward), Alexander the Cracking (Aboriginal Greece), and Augustus (Ancient Rome) in just under 56 minutes. Students brainstorm the course prepared to see ancient art as connected to the contemporary world effectually them, and to discuss how images tin be used politically, economically, and socially – non just as objects of display in a museum or Powerpoint. The mess of electioneering today has neat precedent in ancient cultures – they produced propaganda too.

Ask your students answer to the film by either discussing in small groups, or through a brusk in-form writing exercise. You might ask questions like:

  • Which major sites and historical figures does the narrator focus on during the pic? Go along rail by taking note of names, places, countries, and major dates so we tin can talk over after watching.
  • In what ways do ancient rulers or cultures use visual art? Practice you discover whatsoever recurring themes, methods, or ideas?
  • Which historical figure covered in the film exercise yous think used art virtually effectively in pursuit of ability?

Images and Readings ….

PPT Images

Background reading might include your survey textbook, and (much better) this comprehensive educator guide from the Met Museum. The Met's guide cuts to the chase and highlights primal images with short, explanatory texts on each i. Pages 126-129 offer excellent classroom discussion topics: How did the building blocks of society develop? How does trade bear on cultural development? How is fine art afflicted by politics? What tin images "practise"?

Other resources include Smarthistory'due south excellent Ancient Near Due east section. There are calm readings for students in the AHTR online syllabus.

Content suggestions ….

Early writing tablet recording the allocation of beer Probably from southern Iraq, Late Prehistoric period, 3100-3000 BCE

Early on writing tablet recording the allocation of beer
Probably from southern Republic of iraq, Late Prehistoric period, 3100-3000 BCE

Our library favorite (and managing director of the British Museum) Neil MacGregor'due southA History of the World in 100 Objects covers Aboriginal Well-nigh Eastern cuneiform tablets, which is a groovy place to begin investigating this office of the survey. Some of the earliest cuneiform writing was created in order to keep track of beer, of all things. (Find the text for free online on the BM website, or students can listen for free as well.*) Only the Sumerians likewise produced great literature. TheEpic of Gilgamesh predates Homer'southIlliadandOdysseypast some 1,500 years. With the advent of visual art in Prehistory, and now writing, we're looking at the arrival of the idea of culture – the ability past homo sapiens to enact artistic or abstruse thought. The Met educator guide outlines a group of objects from their collection perfect for investigating the visual culture of the Ancient Near Eastward.

In an hour and fifteen minutes, this  content area can exist investigated through many aboriginal objects,including

  • Cuneiform tablets
  • Ziggurats
  • Vases, cylinder seals, and votive figure
  • Victory Stele of Naram-Sin
  • The Lawmaking of Hammurabi
  • Assyrian palace reliefs
  • The Ishtar Gate and throne room wall
  • Reliefs at Persepolis, including Darius and Xerxes Receiving Tribute

You may have already discussed different interpretations of "culture" – as learned behavior, not genetic or biological, including languages, customs, beliefs, technology that is shared by a group. Civilization is irrevocably intertwined with the idea of culture, of settlement and the formation of rules and regulations, and the growth of urban centers.  And, as Neil MacGregor says, "Writing is essential for the cosmos of what we think of as human being civilization." This is why the tablets are such a great identify to brainstorm the discussion!

This "Urban Revolution" begins first in the "fertile crescent" of Mesopotamia (today = Iraq) and Egypt c. 3,500-3000 BC. Information technology forms the symbolic purlieus between pre-history and history and during it mankind invented "civilization" – the development of permanent systems of social regulation; the starting time of infighting for command of these regulated resources; social bonds, social welfare; constabulary; send; irrigation; agriculture; food surplus; and settlement.

Agriculture was the basis for wealth.  Religion played a central role in regime and daily life.  Leaders strongly identified themselves with the gods. Many societies rose and fell during the period we designate as the Ancient Virtually East.  Stability was fleeting and this almost of the objects pertained to religion and rule. The earliest of these communities were the Sumerians.  The Sumerians are credited with many firsts:  the bike, the turn, casting objects in copper and bronze and cuneiform writing.

The city-land was another of the dandy Sumerian "inventions." Activities that had once been individually initiated became institutionalized and the land took responsibility for the safe and welfare of its inhabitants. Huge mud-brick temples like theZiggurat at Ur (2100 – 2050 BCE, nowadays-solar day Muqaiyir, Iraq)towered over the flat plains. (These historic edifices became the backdrop for gimmicky images photographed, filmed, and transmitted to the W during the Iraq War.) Objects such as the Warka (or Uruk) Vase andcylinder seals (c. 2600 BCE) were constitute in the vicinity of such temples during twentieth century archaeological excavations. (The Warka Vase was 1 of the thousands of artifacts which were looted from the National Museum of Iraq during the 2003 Invasion of Republic of iraq and was afterwards returned during an amnesty.)Votive figureswere also important artifacts of this period, and propose patronage of the arts.

In 2334 BCE, the loosely linked group of cities known equally Sumer (Southern Mesopotamia), came under the domination Sargon of Akkad who came from the Northward of Mesopotamia. Sargon's grandson, Naram-Sin, called himself "King of the Four Quarters," and theStele of Naram-sin (c. 2250 BCE, 6.five feet high!) offers an opportunity to discuss how leadership and power is portrayed in visual arts of this period through h ieratic scale. The Votive Statue of Gudea, c. 2090 BCE, may only be 29" high, merely Gudea ruled the one city state that managed to fend off the Akkadians. Gudea's prototype is therefore a not bad comparison with Naram-sin'southward. How do the 2 portrayals of leadership differ?  Are there gimmicky connections to be made with portraits of current political leaders?

The Stele of Hammurabi, c. 1792-1750 BCE, is approximately 7 feet tall. Rex Hammurabi (r. 1792-1750 BCE) established a centralized authorities under the Babylonians and ruled southern Mesopotamia in the early 2d millennium. He is known for his conquests, but too for his law code. This is the first systematic codification of his people's rights, duties, penalties for infringements. There are 300 or then entries, some dealing with commercial and property matters, others with domestic problems and concrete assault. (Run across this Yale translation which offers cracking background context also as the code translated in full.)

Later on centuries of struggle in Southern Mesopotamia among Sumer, Akkad, and Lagash, the Assyrians rise to dominance in Northern Mesopotamia, coming to power in 1400 BCE.  By the 9th century BCE they controlled most of Mesopotamia. Their palaces were busy with scenes of battles, Assyrian victories, presentations of tribute to the king, gainsay between men and beasts, and religious imagery. Palace reliefs like that of Assurnasirpal Two Killing Lions, c 875 BCE,provide an opportunity for in-class formal analysis.

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Briefly introduce the object:The Assyrian kings expected their greatness to be recorded. They deputed sculptors to create a series of narrative reliefs exalting majestic power and piety. These narratives recorded battles but also conquests of wild animals.  This is ane of the earliest and most all-encompassing forms of narrative relief found earlier the Roman Empire.

Group discussion might brainstorm with broad questions like "What practice we see? What are our very start observations?" before asking students to differentiate between form ("What elements of course can we discern (line, color, material, composition, technique)") and context  ("What elements of context tin can we discern (narrative, characters involved, does this compare to other works we know in similar or different ways?, historical context)"). Summing up responses will suggest that the form and the context of the work are interdependent – the strong key figure, the use of the bow and the chase, hieratic calibration, and the purple dominance of the "king of the beasts," the lion, underlines that visual narrative is an of import memorializing aspect of this ruler's reign and "speak his ability."

The visual history of the One is brindled with the rise and fall of rulers and city-states, one reason why such rulers were slap-up to immortalize themselves in architecture and art. Our final ruler is the one who continued the Neo-Babylonian empire, delivering it from the Assyrians in the northward. The most renowned of the Babylonian kings was Nebuchadnezzar 2 (r. c. 605 BC – 562 BC), whose exploits the biblical volume of Daniel recounts, he is notorious today for his suppression of the Jews. Like corking rulers beyond fourth dimension, Nebuchadnezzar II used compages every bit a way to demonstrate his ability, and the jewel in the crown of his building campaign was the Ishtar Gate (c.575 BCE).Today, parts of the Ishtar Gate and the processional fashion leading to it are in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Information technology was dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar and faced with a rare blue stone chosen lapis lazuli. (A smaller reproduction of the gate was built in Iraq under Saddam Hussein as the archway to a museum that has not been completed. Impairment to this reproduction has occurred since the Republic of iraq War.)

The king had left instructions in cuneiform scrip on tablets of clay.  He urged his successors to repair his royal edifices, which for identification purposes, had bricks inserted in the walls, with an inscription announcing that they were the work of "Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon from far sea to far ocean."  The new inscribed bricks relay that the New Babylon was "rebuilt in the era of the leader Saddam Hussein." Today, rulers all over the globe in many different cultures still utilize architecture to demonstrate their power equally Hussein did, linking his dominion with an aboriginal, grand era in Iraq's history.

Although Nebudchadnezzar had boasted that "I had caused a mighty wall to circumscribe Babylon…so that the enemy who would exercise evil would not threaten," Cyrus of Persia captured the urban center in the 6th century BCE. Babylon was but i of the Persian conquests. Egypt fell to them in 525 BCE and by 480 BCE the Persian Empire was the largest the world had nevertheless known extending from the Indus River in southeastern Asia to the Danube in northeastern Europe. The almost important source of Persian compages is the palace of Persepolis. Information technology was congenital past Darius I, successors of Cyrus (a figure Dr. Spivey introduces in his documentary). Reliefs on the walls of Persepolis depict processions of imperial guards, Farsi nobles, dignitaries and representatives from over 23 subject field nations bringing the king tributes.  Every one of them wears his national costume.

The Achaemenid line ended with the death of Darius Iii in 330 BCE at the hands of Alexander the Great, king of Republic of macedonia. Alexander conquered Persepolis, and set the phase for the next affiliate – Aboriginal Greece!

At the end of the class ….

The Met Educator guide (linked above) has some great suggestions for writing and discussion activities linked to this content area, two of which are below. Alternatively, students could complete a short writing response to the guided questions for Dr. Nigel Spivey's "The Art of Persuasion."

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* The book started life every bit a 100-part series on BBC Radio 4.  His text is a good replacement for the art history survey textbook. Information technology's free and – unlike any fine art history survey textbook – it's fascinating and compellingly written.