art

The Upper Paleolithic Period

(c. 42,000-8000 BCE)

❖Why do you think that images of man were less prevalent in Paleolithic art than those of women?

- women were seen as goddesses of fertility and good health, and people like to create art of the things that inspire them - creators of life = gods

dolmen

a prehistoric structure made up of two or more large (often upright) stones supporting a large, flat horizontal slab or slabs

The Power of Naming - Our ability to understand and interpret works of art is made more difficult by distorting and limiting labels. Calling a prehistoric figure "woman" instead of "Venus" frees us to think about it in new and creative ways.

before the 20th century, artists did not usually give titles to their work (names chosen by owners or art historians - carrying prejudices) - example Venus of Wilendorf - the Roman goddess of love and beauty with the geographical location where the statuette was found. The choice of this name sent a message that the figure was associated with religious belief, that it represented an ideal of womanhood, and that it initiated a long line of images of idealized feminine beauty in the history of art. Soon, similar works of Paleolithic sculpture came to be labeled as "Venuses." There is no proof that any of these figures had religious associations. Scholars have interpreted them as representations of actual women, as fertility symbols, as expressions of ideal beauty, as erotic totems, as ancestor figures, or even as dolls meant to help young girls learn women's roles. They could have been any or all of these.

3.2 Middle Kingdom (c. 1975-1640 bce) What changes to ancient Egyptian artistic conventions occur during the Middle Kingdom? About 2010 bce, a series of kings named Mentuhotep (ruled c. 2010-c. 1938 bce) reestablished royal power and reunited Egypt after several centuries of political disorganization. Under a stable, unified government, art and literature flourished in the Middle Kingdom, demonstrating a burgeoning awareness of the political upheaval of recent history. Royal portraits of the Middle Kingdom do not always exhibit the self-confident formality of Old Kingdom examples. Some subjects appear to betray an unexpected awareness of the hardship and fragility of human existence. A statue of Twelfth-Dynasty King Senusret III (ruled c. 1836-1818 bce) shows this new sensibility (fig. 3-11). Senusret was a dynamic king. As a successful general, he led four military expeditions into Nubia (Egypt's neighbor to the south). He overhauled the central administration at home, and was effective in regaining control over the country's increasingly independent nobles. But the sunken cheeks and drooping eyelids of his portrait statue seem to capture an emotionally drained monarch, with none of the bold self-confidence of his Old Kingdom forebears. Are we looking at the face of a man wise in the ways of the world but lonely? Is he saddened and burdened by the weight of his responsibilities? Or are we looking at a reassuring statement that in spite of troubled times—which have clearly left their mark on the face of the king himself—royal rule endured in Egypt?

(ruled c. 1836-1818 bce, Dynasty 12). Yellow quartzite, 173/4 × 131/2 × 17″ (45.1 × 34.3 × 43.2 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust (62-11). Credit: Photograph Jamison Miller There is little indication of how ancient Egyptians viewed the artists who created portraits of kings and nobles and recorded so many details of contemporary life, but artists must have been admired and respected. Some certainly had a high opinion of themselves. The tombstone of a Middle Kingdom sculptor claims, "I am an artist who excels in my art, a man above the common herd in knowledge. I know the proper attitude for a statue [of a man]; I know how a woman holds herself, [and how] a spearman lifts his arm. ...There is no man famous for this knowledge other than I myself and my eldest son" (cited in Montet, p. 159).

the importance of meaning - prehistoric art

-in order to understand immortality and find the meaning of human existence -architecture: connected to an understanding of the larger landscape that contained habitations as well as ritual sites. - The immediacy of this image marks a shift in Mesopotamian art, away from a sense of timeless solemnity and toward a more engaging visual narrative that draws viewers into the drama and emotionalism of the event portrayed.

Fundamental social and cultural changes around 6500 BCE mark the beginning of the Neolithic period. These include t

-the development of organized agriculture -the maintenance of herds of domesticated animals -the foundation of year-round settlements with houses and centers of ceramic production.

prehistory divided into 2 sectors

1. Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age (from the Greek paleo, "old," and lithos, "stone")—which has Lower (earliest), Middle, and Upper phases 2. Neolithic, or New Stone Age (from the Greek neo, "new").

3 types of art: paleolithic period

1. mural 2. sculpture in the round 3. relief sculpture

Megalith architecture

A megalith is a large pre-historic stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones.

Art as spoil of war

Art has always been vulnerable in times of social unrest. One recent example is the looting of the head of a woman from Warka (Arabic for Uruk), when an angry mob in Baghdad entered the unguarded Iraq National Museum after the fall of Baghdad to U.S.-led coalition forces in April 2003. The delicate marble head (perhaps originally attached to a wooden statue of a goddess, c. 3300-3000 bce) was later recovered. It was significantly damaged. Also stolen was the Uruk vessel (see fig. 2-3), eventually returned to the museum shattered into 14 pieces. The museum itself managed to reopen in 2009, but thousands of antiquities are still missing. Some of the most bitter resentment spawned by war involves the victors taking art objects that are of great value to the conquered population. For example, two historically priceless objects unearthed in Elamite Susa—the Akkadian Stele of Naram-Sin (see fig. 2-1) and the Babylonian Stele of Hammurabi (see fig. 2-10)—were not Elamite at all, but Mesopotamian. Both had been brought to Susa as military trophies by an Elamite king, who added an inscription to the Stele of Naram-Sin claiming that he had "protected" it. The stele came originally from Sippar, an Akkadian city on the Euphrates River, in what is now Iraq. Raiders from Elam took it to Susa as booty in the twelfth century bce. Uncovered in French excavations, both stelai were taken back to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century and are now displayed in the Louvre. Museums around the world contain such works, either acquired as a result of military conquest or modern archaeological discovery. The Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, which was discovered in Egypt by French troops in 1799, later fell into British hands when they forced the French from Egypt. Ultimately it ended up in the British Museum in London. In the early nineteenth century, the British Lord Elgin purchased and removed Classical Greek reliefs from the Parthenon in Athens with the permission of the Ottoman authorities who governed Greece at the time. Although his actions may have protected the reliefs from neglect and damage in later wars, they have remained installed in the British Museum, despite continuing protests from Greece. Many German collections include works that were similarly "protected" at the end of World War II and are gradually surfacing. In the United States, Native Americans continually demand that artifacts and human remains collected by anthropologists and archaeologists be returned to them.

2.3 Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians In what ways did the design and meaning of great palace complexes and urban development projects express the power of Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian rulers? Around 1400 bce the Assyrians rose to dominance in northern Mesopotamia. They controlled most of Mesopotamia by the end of the ninth century bce. By the early seventh century, they had extended their influence as far west as Egypt. Strongly influenced by Sumerian culture, the Assyrians adopted the ziggurat and preserved Sumerian texts. Assyrian rulers built fortified capital cities. Within them they constructed huge palaces whose walls were covered with paintings and stone reliefs of battle and hunting scenes, royal life or ceremonies, and religious imagery. During his reign (883-859 bce), Assurnasirpal II established his capital at Kalhu (present-day Nimrud, Iraq), on the east bank of the Tigris. He mounted an ambitious building program, fortifying the new city with mud-brick walls 5 miles long and 42 feet high. Most of the buildings were also made of mud brick, but more impressive and durable limestone and alabaster were chosen to create a veneer of pictorial decoration. Colossal guardian figures called lamassus flanked the major portals (fig. 2-11), and panels carved with scenes in low relief covered the walls. In a vivid rendering of lion-hunting (fig. 2-12), Assurnasirpal II stands in a chariot pulled by galloping horses. He draws his bow against an attacking lion, who advances from behind, the arrows already protruding from his body. Another expiring beast collapses on the ground under the horses. The immediacy of this image marks a shift in Mesopotamian art, away from a sense of timeless solemnity and toward a more engaging visual narrative that draws viewers into the drama and emotionalism of the event portrayed.

Assurbanipal, king of the Assyrians two centuries later, established his capital at Nineveh (present-day Kuyunjik, Iraq). He also decorated his palace with panels of alabaster, carved with pictorial narratives in low relief. Most depict the king in battle or hunting, but one panel shows the king and queen relaxing in a pleasure garden (fig. 2-13). The ruler, reclining on a couch, and his queen, seated at his feet, are surrounded by servants bringing trays of food and whisking away insects. The king has taken off his rich necklace and hung it on his couch, and he has laid aside his weapons, seen on the table behind him. The tranquility of this domestic scene is deceptive. Actually it is a victory celebration. A grisly trophy, the upside-down severed head of his vanquished enemy, hangs from a tree at the far left to remind viewers of the king's power and the security it brings to the kingdom.

In public works such as this stele (standing stone slab), the artists of Mesopotamia developed a suave and sophisticated symbolic visual language—a kind of conceptual art—that both communicated and celebrated the political stratification that gave order and security to their world. Akkadian ruler Naram-Sin (ruled 2254-2218 bce) is pictured proudly here (fig. 2-1). His preeminence is signaled directly by size: He is by far the largest person in this scene of military triumph, exemplifying an artistic practice we call hierarchic scale, where relative size indicates relative importance. He is also raised up well above the other figures, boldly silhouetted against blank ground. He strides toward a stylized mountain that matches his own shape, thus increasing the sense of his own grandeur by association. He clasps a veritable arsenal of weaponry—spear, battleaxe, bow and arrow—within his arms and hands, and the grand helmet on his head sprouts horns, an attribute formerly restricted to representations of gods. By wearing this headdress, he claims divinity for himself. Art historian Irene Winter has gone even further, pointing to the eroticized pose and presentation of Naram-Sin, to the alluring display of a well-formed male body. In ancient Mesopotamia, male potency and vigor were directly related to mythical heroism and powerful kingship, and, like the horns on his helmet, well-formed bodies were most frequently associated with gods. Every aspect of the representation of this ruler speaks to his sacred and political authority as leader of the state - Art as a spoil of war

But this stele is more than an emblem of Naram-Sin's divine right to rule. It also tells the story of one of his important military victories. The ruler stands above a crowded scene filled with smaller figures. Those to the left, dressed and posed in a fashion similar to their ruler, represent his army, marching in diagonal bands up the hillside into battle. Identifiable native trees along the mountain pathway heighten the sense that this portrays an actual event, not a generic battle scene. In front of Naram-Sin, both along the right side of the stele and smashed under his forward-striding leg, are representations of the enemy, in this case the Lullubi people from eastern Mesopotamia (in present-day Iran). One small adversary has taken a fatal spear to the neck, while companions behind and below him beg for mercy. Perhaps this ancient art, which combines symbols with stories, looks naïve or crude in relation to our own artistic standards, but we should avoid allowing modern value judgments to block our appreciation of the artistic accomplishments of the ancient Near East—or, indeed, the art of any era or culture. Ancient works of art still have the power to communicate with us forcefully and directly, even across over four millennia of historical distance.

In addition to paintings, caves sometimes contained relief sculptures created by modeling, or shaping, the damp clay of the cave's floor. There is an excellent example from about 13,000 bce at Le Tuc d'Audoubert in southwest France, where the sculptor created two BISON leaning against a ridge of rock (fig. 1-9). These beasts are modeled in very high relief, extending well forward from the background). They display the same conventions employed in cave paintings, with emphasis on the broad masses of the meat-bearing flanks and shoulders. To make the animals even more lifelike, their creator engraved short parallel lines below their necks to represent their shaggy coats. Numerous small footprints found in the clay floor of this cave suggest that important group rites took place here.

CH 1

Neolithic ceramics, or wares made of baked clay—whether vessels or figures of people and animals—display a high degree of technical skill and aesthetic imagination. Among the thousands of surviving miniature figures of humans are a seated WOMAN and MAN, discovered at a pottery-production center in the Danube River valley at Cernavoda, Romania. The artist who made them shaped their bodies out of simple cylinders of clay and posed them in ways that make them seem true to life. Archaeologists believe that such figures mark the emergence of the human body as the core location of human identity. The central role the body has played in the politics, philosophy, and art of historical and modern times seems to have begun around 6000 bce with such Neolithic figurines.

CH 1

The cave paintings at Altamira, in northern Spain (fig. 1-8) were the first to be discovered and identified with the Upper Paleolithic period. They have recently been dated to about 12,000 bce. The artists working here created sculptural effects by painting the bodies of their animals on natural bulges in the cave's walls and ceilings. To produce the herd of bison on the ceiling of the main cavern, they used rich reds and browns for the broad areas of the animals' shoulders, backs, and flanks, then sharpened the contours of the rocks and added the details of the legs, tails, heads, and horns in black and brown. They mixed yellow and brown from iron-based ocher to make the red tones. They derived black from manganese or charcoal

CH 1

n addition to inventing cuneiform writing, Sumerians developed seals to secure and identify documents and signify property ownership. Cylinder seals, usually less than 2 inches high, were made of hard and sometimes semiprecious stones with designs incised into the surface. Rolled across damp clay, the seal leaves a mirror image of its design that cannot easily be altered once dry. The lapis lazuli cylinder seal in figure 2-7 is one of over 400 that were found in excavations of the royal burials at Ur. It comes from the tomb of a royal woman known as Puabi, and was found leaning against the right arm of her body. The modern clay impression of its incised design shows two registers of a convivial banquet at which all the guests are women. They wear fringed skirts and their long hair is gathered up in buns behind their necks. Two seated women in the upper register raise their glasses. With them are standing servants; the one at far left holds a fan. The single seated figure in the lower register sits in front of a table piled with food, while a figure behind her offers a cup of drink, presumably drawn from the jar she carries in her other hand. This jar is similar to the container held by the lion on the lyre plaque (see fig. 2-5). Four women to the far right provide musical entertainment on the lower register

CH 2 - Sumer

During the Sumerian period, a people known as the Akkadians had settled north of Uruk. They adopted Sumerian culture, but unlike the Sumerians, the Akkadians spoke a Semitic language (the same family of languages that includes Arabic and Hebrew). Under the powerful military and political figure Sargon I (ruled c. 2332-2279 bce), they conquered most of Mesopotamia. For more than half a century, Sargon, "King of the Four Quarters of the World," ruled this empire from his capital at Akkad, the actual site of which is yet to be discovered. The Stele of Naram-Sin, from about 2254-2218 bce (see fig. 2-1), commemorates a military victory of Sargon's grandson and successor Naram-Sin.

CH 2 Akkad, Ur, Lagash, and Babylon The Akkadian Empire fell around 2180 bce to the Guti, a mountain people from the northeast. For a brief time they controlled most of the Mesopotamian plain, but the Sumerians eventually regained control of the region in 2112 bce under King Urnammu. He established his capital at Ur, where he built a mud-brick ziggurat dedicated to the moon god Nanna (fig. 2-8). Three staircases converge at an imposing entrance gate atop the first platform. Each platform is angled outward from top to base, probably to prevent rainwater from forming puddles and eroding the pavement. The first two levels of the Nanna ziggurat and their retaining walls were reconstructed in recent times. Little remains of the upper level and temple.

The large Sumerian city-state of Lagash remained independent throughout this period under Gudea, who ruled from Girsu (present-day Telloh, Iraq) on the Tigris River. Gudea built and restored many temples. Within them, following a venerable Mesopotamian tradition, he placed stone votive statues of himself as the embodiment of just rule. Twenty have survived, making Gudea's face a familiar one in the study of ancient Near Eastern art. In the cuneiform inscription on the statue shown here (fig. 2-9), Gudea dedicates himself, the sculpture, and the temple in which the sculpture resided to the goddess Geshtinanna, the divine poet and interpreter of dreams. Gudea's prominent face, framed below a patterned wide-brimmed hat, is youthful and serene; his oversized, wide-open eyes perpetually confront the gaze of the deity. In front of his chest, he holds a vessel from which life-giving water flows in two streams filled with leaping fish.

CH 2- Lagash, and Babylon The land between the rivers remained a much-contested prize. Periods of political turmoil and stable government alternated until the Amorites, a Semitic-speaking people from the Arabian Desert to the west, moved into the area and reunited Sumer under their ruler Hammurabi (ruled 1792-1750 bce). Their capital city was Babylon, and its residents were called Babylonians. Among Hammurabi's achievements was a written legal code that recorded the laws of his realm and the penalties for breaking them. The code, incised in cuneiform script on a stele, appears under a portrait of the ruler standing before the enthroned supreme judge and sun god, Shamash, patron of law and justice (fig. 2-10). In the introductory section of the stele's long inscription, Hammurabi declared that with this code of law he intended "to cause justice to prevail in the land to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong might not oppress the weak nor the weak the strong." Most of the 300 or so entries that follow deal with commercial and property matters. Only 68 relate to domestic life, and a mere 20 address physical assault. Punishments were based on the wealth, social standing, and gender of the offender. The rights of the wealthy were favored over the poor, citizens over slaves, men over women.

The carvers of these stone votive figures followed the conventions of Sumerian art by using traditional ways of representing forms. The faces, bodies, and clothing are stylized and streamlined to emphasize the cylindrical forms of the figures. Stocky, muscular, and bare-chested, the men in this group wear sheepskin kilts. The female figures are as massive as the men. All stand solemnly, hands clasped in respect, perhaps an expected posture for worshipers. The bold, glaring, inlaid eyes may be related to statements in contemporary Sumerian texts that advise worshipers to approach their deities with an attentive gaze.

CH 2- Sumer

Around 3000 bce, Egypt became a united state along the banks of the Nile River. According to legend, the country had previously evolved into two kingdoms: Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt in the north. ("Upper" and "Lower" referring to the flow of the Nile—upstream or downstream.) The works of art and architecture that survive from ancient Egypt come mainly from tombs and temples, most of which were located in secure places and built with durable materials. As a result, what we know about the ancient art of consolidated Egypt is mostly rooted in religious beliefs and practices. Based on that knowledge, it is clear that artistic conventions (established ways of representing things) were developed and established during the Early Dynastic period, and that they would endure, with subtle but significant variations, over almost three millennia of Egyptian history. Stability and continuity were valued more than innovation and change. These artistic conventions are already established on a stone palette of about 2950 bce found in the temple of Horus at Hierakonpolis. Palettes (flat stones with a circular depression carved on one side) were used to grind and prepare the makeup that was applied around the eyes to reduce the glare of the sun. The relief carvings on the surfaces of this palette focus on a king named Narmer (fig. 3-2). Although the Palette of Narmer has the same form as utilitarian palettes, it is much larger and must have had a ceremonial function. Its reliefs employ representational conventions that would dominate royal Egyptian art from this point on.

CH 3 Dynasty

Two of the most extensive early necropolises are at Saqqara and Giza, near present-day Cairo. For his tomb complex at Saqqara, the Third Dynasty King Djoser (ruled c. 2650-2631 bce) commissioned the earliest-known monumental architecture in Egypt. Imhotep, prime minister and royal advisor, was the designer of the complex. He laid out Djoser's tomb as a stepped pyramid consisting of six mastaba-like elements stacked on top of each other. Originally the pyramid was covered with a limestone facing, or veneer (fig. 3-3). Although the final structure superficially resembles the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, it differs in both concept and purpose. It is built of finely cut stone, not mud brick; it rises in stages without ramps; and it signals a tomb, not a temple. From its top, a 92-foot shaft descends to a granite-lined, underground burial vault. Adjacent to the stepped pyramid, a funerary temple was used for continuing worship of the dead king. Sham buildings—simple masonry shells filled with debris—reproduce the shrines, booths, and chapels Djoser had used during rituals associated with kingship. They were intended for the use of his ka in the afterlife (fig. 3-4).

CH 3.1 Dynasty - Tombs The architectural form most closely identified with Egypt is the true pyramid with a square base and four smooth, sloping triangular sides. Most famous are the three GREAT PYRAMIDS at Giza (fig. 3-5), part of tomb complexes built by three successive Fourth Dynasty kings—Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, whose reigns spanned c. 2551-2472 bce. The oldest and largest of the Giza pyramids is that of Khufu, which covers 13 acres at its base. Originally it rose to a height of about 480 feet—some 30 feet above the current summit, which was once faced with a sheath of polished limestone. The complex of Khafre (ruled c. 2520-2494 bce) is the best preserved. It is most famous for the colossal portrait of the king as a sphinx that combines his head with the body of a crouching lion (see fig. intro-1). Giza. c. 2575-2450 bce, Dynasty 4. Erected by (from left) Menkaure, Khafre, and Khufu. Granite and limestone, height of pyramid of Khufu 450′ (137 m). The designers of the pyramids tried to ensure that the king and his tomb "home" would never be disturbed. Khufu's builders placed his tomb chamber in the very heart of the mountain of masonry, at the end of a long, narrow, steeply rising passageway, sealed off after the king's burial by a 50-ton stone block. Three false passageways, either deliberately meant to mislead or the result of changes in plan as construction progressed, obscured the location of the tomb. Despite such precautions, early looters managed to penetrate the tomb chamber and make off with Khufu's funeral treasure. Credit: © Kostenko Olga/Shutterstock Next to each of these pyramids was a funerary temple. It was connected by an enclosed corridor, to a so-called valley temple on the bank of the Nile (fig. 3-6). When a king died, his body was ferried across the Nile from the royal palace to his valley temple, where it was received with elaborate ceremony. It was then carried up the corridor to the funerary temple and placed in its chapel, where rites for the benefit of the king's spirit—meant to be continued for perpetuity—were initiated. Finally, the body was entombed in a well-hidden vault inside the pyramid.

The cities and city-states that developed along the rivers of southern Mesopotamia between about 3500 and 2340 bce are known collectively as Sumer. The Sumerians have been credited with many "firsts." They may have invented the wagon wheel, the plow, and copper and bronze casting. Perhaps their greatest contribution to later civilizations was the invention in about 3100 bce of a form of writing on clay tablets, apparently inspired by the need for an accounting system for goods traded at the city of Uruk. Simple pictures, or pictographs, were drawn in wet clay with a pointed tool, each representing a thing or a concept. Between 2900 and 2400 bce, the pictographs evolved into phonograms—representations of syllable sounds—thus becoming a true writing system. Scribes (professionals who wrote and maintained records) developed a writing instrument called a stylus, in this case with a triangular wedge at one end and point at the other. Mesopotamian writing is termed cuneiform (Latin for "wedge-shaped") after the shape of the marks made by this stylus

In architecture, the Sumerians' most imposing buildings were ziggurats. These stepped pyramidal structures had a temple or shrine on top. Towering over the flat plains, ziggurats proclaimed the wealth, prestige, and stability of a city's rulers and glorified its gods. They functioned as lofty bridges between the earth and the heavens, a meeting place for humans and their gods. The peoples of the ancient Near East were polytheistic, meaning that they worshiped many gods and goddesses, attributing to them power over human activities and the forces of nature. Each city had one special protective deity, and people believed that the fate of the city depended on the power of that deity. Religious specialists, eventually developing into a class of priests, controlled rituals and sacred sites, ensuring that the gods were honored properly. Temple complexes—clusters of religious, administrative, and service buildings—stood in each city's center. Two large temple complexes at Uruk (present-day Warka, Iraq)—one dedicated to the sky god Anu, the other to Inanna, goddess of love and war—mark the first independent Sumerian city-state. Anu's ziggurat, built up in stages over the centuries, ultimately rose to a height of about 40 feet. Around 3100 bce, a whitewashed brick temple that modern archaeologists call the White Temple was erected on top (fig. 2-2A).

3.1.2 sculpture

In three-dimensional sculpture, a rigidly frontal, cubic conception of the figure was used to represent members of the royal family and high officials. The compact, rectilinear solidity of Egyptian figures—a striking contrast with the cylindrical shapes of early Mesopotamian sculpture—may relate to a desire to give these statues a sense of strength and permanence. An over-life-size statue of KHAFRE (fig. 3-7) from the valley temple of his pyramid complex represents the ruler enthroned and protected by the falcon-god Horus, who perches behind the king's head, enfolding it in his wings. Khafre wears the traditional royal costume: a short kilt, a false beard symbolic of kingship, and a folded linen headdress. He conveys dignity, calm, and, above all, permanence. The statue's compactness—arms pressed tightly to the body, body firmly anchored in the block—projects a sense of unwavering power in an athletic body caught at the peak of perfection.

Sumerian artists also worked in more precious materials. A superb example of their skill from c. 2600-2500 bce is a kind of harp known as a lyre, which was found in a royal tomb in the city of Ur (present-day Muqaiyir, Iraq). It combines wood, gold, lapis lazuli, and shell to dazzling effect (fig. 2-5). Archaeologists have restored the lost wooden parts of the lyre and reassembled the surviving pieces. On one end of the sound box, above a flat panel with inlaid shell images featuring animals behaving as humans, sits the gold, sculpted head of a magnificently bearded bull. His head is strikingly lifelike despite the decoratively patterned blue beard, created out of the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli. Since this material had to be imported from Afghanistan, it serves as evidence of widespread trade in the region at this time. In the inlaid scene visible just under the lapis lazuli beard, a hyena and a lion deliver food and drink to a banquet; while in the scene just below, a musical ensemble of a donkey, a bear, and a fox provide the entertainment. The bottom scene portrays a scorpion-man associated with the Epic of Gilgamesh, a 3,000-line Sumerian poem about a hero who braves dangerous adventures in order to understand immortality and find the meaning of human existence

Inlay is also used to create figural scenes on another spectacular object excavated from the royal tombs of Ur—a wooden box known at the Standard of Ur. The themes of the scenes are success in battle on one side, and the celebration of Sumerian victory during a banquet on the other. The materials used are equally as sumptuous as those on the lyre, including blue lapis lazuli, red limestone, and shell. We are not sure how this box was used, but its three registers of scenes are among the best surviving examples of the kind of pictorial narrative that captivated the Sumerian artistic imagination and conveyed their most important cultural messages

Archaeologists now think that the people who lived at this time held ideas very different from ours about what it meant to be human as distinct from animal.

Instead of copying what he or she saw in nature, the carver created a unique creature, part human and part beast. Was the figure intended to represent a person wearing a ritual lion mask?made about 40,000-35,000 bce from the ivory tusk of a now-extinct wooly mammoth. The figure has been reconstructed from fragments found by archaeologists excavating at Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany. Nearly a foot tall, this remarkable statue surpasses in size and complexity most early figurines Lion-Human product of complex thinking and creative imagination: the uniquely human ability to conceive and represent a creature never seen in nature.

Relief sculpture - definition

Modeling - shaping; the process of molding a three-dimensional sculpture out of a malleable substance

The statue was carved in an unusual material (imported from Nubia), which produces a rare optical effect in sunlight; it glows a deep blue, the celestial color of Horus. In its original location, the sun would have shown through clerestory windows, illuminating the alabaster floor and the figure, and creating a blue radiance around the figure. Credit: Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt. © Bridgeman Images These same formal and expressive features characterize a double portrait of Khafre's son MENKAURE (ruled c. 2490-2472 bce) AND A QUEEN, probably his principal wife Khamerernebty II (fig. 3-8). It was discovered in his valley temple. The figures, carved from a single block of stone, are visually joined by the queen's symbolic embrace. The king is depicted in accordance with cultural and political ideals as an athletic, youthful figure nude to the waist. He stands in a conventionally balanced pose with one foot extended. His arms are held straight down, close to his sides, and his fists are clenched over cylindrical objects. His equally youthful queen echoes his striding pose with a smaller step forward, and her sheer, tight-fitting garment reveals the soft curves of her body. Her fullness serves as a foil for the taut muscularity of the king.

Old Kingdom sculptors also made statues of less prominent people. They rendered these figures in a more relaxed, lifelike fashion, as in a statue of a SEATED SCRIBE from early in the Fifth Dynasty (fig. 3-9), with round head, engaging and individualized face, and cap of close-cropped hair. We know he is a scribe because he sits with a papyrus scroll partially unrolled on his lap, and his right hand once clasped a now-lost reed brush used in writing. The scribe's sedentary vocation has made his sagging body slightly flabby—advertising a life free from hard labor. The alert expression on his face reveals more than a lively intelligence. Because the pupils are slightly off-center in the irises, the eyes give the illusion of being in motion, as if they were seeking contact. The reflective quality of the polished crystal inlay reproduces with eerie fidelity the contrast between the moist surface of eyes and the surrounding soft flesh in a living human face.

sculpture in the round (statues that are carved free of any background or block

Paleolithic sculptures- As early as 30,000 bce humans in Europe and Asia made small figures, or figurines, of people and animals with bone, ivory, stone, and clay.

Most carved human figures from the Upper Paleolithic period represent women, and the most famous female figurine is theWOMAN FROM WILLENDORF (fig. 1-3), found in Austria and dating from about 24,000 bce

She was carved from limestone and originally colored with red ocher. Her swelling, rounded forms make her seem much larger than her actual 4⅜-inch height. The sculptor exaggerated the figure's female attributes (features that indicate a particular figure's identity) by giving her pendulous breasts, a bulging belly with a deep navel (actually a natural indentation in the stone), wide hips, dimpled knees and buttocks, and solid thighs. By carving a woman with a well-nourished body, the artist may have stressed her health and fertility, which would ensure the ability to produce strong children, thus guaranteeing the survival of the community.

Of all the megalithic monuments of Europe, the most famous is STONEHENGE in Wiltshire, southern England (figs. 1-14, 1-15). A henge is a circle of stones or posts, often surrounded by a ditch with built-up embankments. While Stonehenge is not the largest such circle surviving from the Neolithic period, it is one of the most complex. It was constructed over eight different phases of activity starting in about 3000 bce and stretching over a millennium and a half through the Bronze Age.

Stonehenge started as a cemetery of cremation burials marked by a circle of bluestones that were transported over 150 miles from the west. They were quarried from a site in Wales that was also a prehistoric healing site. Through numerous alterations and rebuilding over time, Stonehenge continued to function as a place of the dead. Between 2900 and 2600 bce, the bluestones were rearranged into an arc. Around 2500 bce, a circle of huge sarsen stones cut from gray sandstone created the famous appearance of the site. This so-called sarsen circle consists of a ring of uprights weighing up to 26 tons each and averaging 13½ feet in height. The original bluestones were rearranged within the circle. The center of the site was transformed by a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of five sarsen trilithons, or pairs of upright stones topped by lintels. The one at the middle rose taller than the others to a height of 24 feet, with a lintel over 15 feet long and 3 feet thick. Many theories have been proposed to explain the meaning of Stonehenge. In the Middle Ages, people thought that Merlin, the legendary magician of King Arthur, had built it. Later, the complex was erroneously associated with the rituals of Celtic druids. Because its orientation is related to the position of the sun at the solstice, some have argued that it was an observatory to track cosmic events or a calendar for regulating agricultural schedules. None of these ideas is supported by current archaeologists and recent evidence. Experts now believe that Stonehenge was the site of ceremonies linked to death and burial, and that this complex can be understood only in relation to nearby prehistoric sites dating from the same period when it was in use. The settlements built near Stonehenge also follow circular layouts, but they were built of wood, not stone. They were sites of human habitation rather than burial and ritual. A mile from Stonehenge is Durrington Walls, a large settlement (almost 1,500 feet across) surrounded by a ditch and containing a number of wooden circles and circular houses. Archaeological evidence records that some people who stayed here had traveled from regions far away from the site and may have been visiting as pilgrims. Banked avenues connected Stonehenge and Durrington Walls to the Avon River, joining the world of the living (the wood settlement) with the world of the dead (the stone circle). Neolithic people would have moved between these worlds as they walked the avenues, sometimes to bring the dead for burial, sometimes to participate in ceremonies or rituals dedicated to the memory of ancestors. The meaning of Stonehenge, therefore, is connected to an understanding of the larger landscape that contained habitations as well as ritual sites.

2.3.1 Neo-Babylonians At the end of the seventh century bce, the Medes, a people from western Iran, allied with the Babylonians and the Scythians, a nomadic people from northern Asia (present-day Russia and Ukraine), invaded Assyria. In 612 bce, this army captured Nineveh. When the dust settled, Assyria was no more and the Neo-Babylonians—so named because they recaptured the splendor that had marked Babylon 12 centuries earlier under Hammurabi—controlled a region that stretched from present-day Turkey to northern Arabia and from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean Sea. The most famous Neo-Babylonian ruler was Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled 605-562 bce), notorious today for his suppression of the Jews, as recorded in the book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. A great patron of architecture, he built temples throughout his realm and transformed Babylon—the cultural, political, and economic hub of his empire—into one of the most splendid cities of its day. A broad avenue—called the Processional Way because it was the route taken by religious processions honoring the city's patron god Marduk—crossed the eastern sector of the city (fig. 2-14). Up to 66 feet wide at points, the avenue was paved with large stone slabs.

The Processional Way ended at the Ishtar Gate (fig. 2-15), a main entrance to the city itself, faced with colorful glazed bricks. This decoration required careful planning and great technical skill. Each of the dragons on the gate, for example, required as many as 75 to 80 bricks. And since firing caused the bricks to shrink, each brick had to be slightly larger than its allotted space in the final design. With its four crenellated (notched) towers and its elaborate decoration, the Ishtar Gate symbolized Babylonian power.

This serene funerary mask of the young Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun (fig. 3-1) dazzles us with the royal splendor of the precious materials with which it was made. Its legendary relationship with its sensational discovery certainly adds to its appeal. British archaeologist Howard Carter's dramatic discovery of the king's tomb in 1922 established the "romance of archaeology" in the public mind. Now the more than 3,500 items from Tutankhamun's tomb are showcased in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and periodic blockbuster exhibitions of objects from the tomb keep its appeal fresh for successive generations of museum-goers.

The enchantment of Egyptian art is also aesthetic. Look into Tutankhamun's eyes. They are beautifully formed, emphatic shapes—black disks set in white and energized by tiny touches of red at the corners, yet their dark outline avoids the natural detail of lashes. Capturing fleeting moments like the fluttering of lashes during the blink of an eye was of little interest to a people concerned with timeless and eternal visions. By emphasizing clarity of line and color, streamlined forms, and the distillation of nature to elemental geometric shapes, ancient Egyptian artists established a standard of technical and aesthetic excellence that we continue to revere to this day. * * * * * At the same time that city-states such as Sumer began to develop in Mesopotamia, a rich civilization arose in Egypt in the fertile valley and delta of the Nile (map 3-1). Around 5000 bce, the valley's inhabitants adopted the agricultural village life associated with Neolithic culture. Farming communities along the Nile cooperated to control the river's flow. As in Mesopotamia, they soon formed alliances. By about 3500 bce, there were several larger chiefdoms in the lower Nile Valley. Soon, Egypt was politically unified under a succession of kings from powerful families or dynasties. Map 3-1 ANCIENT EGYPT

Between 4000 and 3000 bce, a major cultural shift seems to have taken place. Agricultural villages evolved into cities simultaneously and independently in both northern and southern Mesopotamia. These prosperous urban centers joined with their surrounding territories to create what are known as city-states, each with its own gods and government. Social hierarchies emerged with the development of specialized skills beyond those needed for agricultural work. To grain mills and ovens were added brick and pottery kilns, and textile and metal workshops. With extra goods and even modest affluence came increased trade and contact with other cultures. With few natural defenses, Mesopotamia's wealth and agricultural resources made it vulnerable to political upheaval. Over the centuries, the balance of power shifted between north and south and between local powers and outside invaders. First the Sumerians controlled the south. Then they were eclipsed by the Akkadians, their neighbors to the north. When invaders from farther north conquered the Akkadians, the Sumerians regained power locally. The Babylonians next dominated the south. Later, the center of power shifted to the Assyrians in the north, then back again to the Babylonians (Neo-Babylonian period). Throughout this time, important cultural centers arose outside Mesopotamia, such as Elam on the plain between the Tigris River and the Zagros Mountains to the east, the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia (in present-day Turkey), and, beginning in the sixth century bce, the land of the Achaemenid Persians in present-day Iran. The Persians eventually established an empire that included the entire ancient Near East.

Well before farming communities appeared in Europe, people in Asia Minor and the ancient Near East domesticated grains in an area known today as the Fertile Crescent (map 2-1). A little later, in the sixth or fifth millennium bce, agriculture developed in the alluvial plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Greeks called this land Mesopotamia, meaning the "land between the rivers," now in present-day Iraq. In a region prone to both drought and flood, there was a need for large-scale systems to control the water supply. Meeting this need may have contributed to the development of the first cities.

henge

a circle of stones or posts, often surrounded by a ditch with built-up embankments

Much of what we know of daily life in Neolithic communities comes from the material remains of art and architecture. One of the richest Neolithic archaeological sites is in the Konya plain of central Turkey at Çatalhöyük, where the first traces of a settlement date to 7400 bce and where the continual building of house upon house in successive generations resulted in the rise of great mounds of villages. The oldest part of Çatalhöyük was home to as many as 3,000 people at any one time. It consists of many densely clustered houses made of rectangular mud bricks held together with mortar, and provides us with a clear picture of the ways Neolithic architecture was used. Walls, floors, and ceilings were covered with plaster and lime-based paint. Frequent replastering and repainting, along with the mounding of house upon house, created a sense of historical continuity that outlasted any one human lifetime. The practice of burying the dead under the floors of many buildings rooted the site in the community's past as well as its future

The houses of Çatalhöyük were powerful places not only because of the literal depths of their histories, but also because of the extraordinary art that decorated their interiors. Painted on the walls of some houses are violent and wild scenes. In some, humans are represented without heads as if they had been decapitated. Vultures or other birds of prey appear huge next to them, producing narratives that seem to highlight dangerous interactions between people and animals. In one painting (fig. 1-11), small jumping and running humans surround a huge, horned deer. One figure pulls something that sticks out of the deer's mouth, perhaps its tongue. There is an emphasis on maleness. Some of the human figures are bearded and the deer has an erect penis. Archaeologists have interpreted this scene as a dangerous game or ritual of baiting and taunting a wild animal. In other paintings, people hunt or tease boars or bulls

art must be ____ and ____ in order to be called art.

intentional, representational

mural - definition

literally "wall-like," a large painting or decoration, created either directly onto the wall, or created separately and affixed to the wall

In the early twentieth century, scholars believed that art, in general, had a social function. They proposed that cave paintings might be associated with prehistoric ceremonies performed to strengthen clan bonds or to enhance the fertility of animals used for food. In 1903, French archaeologist Salomon Reinach suggested that cave paintings were expressions of "sympathetic magic." Prehistoric painters may have produced pictures of reclining bison, for example, to ensure that hunters found their prey asleep. Abbé Henri Breuil extended these ideas to claim that caves were used as places of worship and as settings for initiation rites.

n the second half of the twentieth century, scholars rejected these ideas. They based their new interpretations on timely scientific methods and current social theory. André Leroi-Gourhan and Annette Laming-Emperaire, for example, dismissed the "sympathetic magic" explanation because debris from human settlements revealed that the animals traditionally portrayed in caves were not those used most frequently for food. These scholars discovered that the distribution of images was often highly organized, with different animals predominating in different areas of a cave. Leslie G. Freeman's study of the Altamira Cave in the 1980s concluded that the reclining bison are neither dead, asleep, nor disabled—as earlier thought—but dust-wallowing, common behavior during the mating season. A more recent interpretation by Steve Mithen argues that the paintings were used to teach novice hunters about animal behavior. They were situated deep within caves since this knowledge was intended only for a privileged group.

corbeling

rows or layers of stone are laid with the end of each row projecting beyond the row beneath, progressing until opposing layers almost meet, then can be capped with a stone (capstone)

capstone

the final, topmost stone in a corbel arch or vault, which joins the sides and completes the structure

What ended the Neolithic Age?

the introduction of metalworking in the Bronze Age, around 3400 bce in the Near East and about 2300 bce in Europe.

prehistory

the thousands of years of human civilization before written historical records.

Sculpture in the round - definition

three-dimensional sculpture that is carved free of any background or block Attributes - features that identify a particular figure's identity

passage graves

tomb under a cairn, reached by a long, narrow, slab-lined access passage or passageway

post and lintel - architecture

two upright posts, supported by a horizontal element (lintel)

Ceramics - definition

wares made of baked clay; often vessels or figures of people and animals