Full Description
This book is the first in ten years to present a comprehensive survey of art and architecture in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey), from 8000 BCE to the arrival of Islam in 636 CE. The book is richly illustrated with c. 400 full-colour photographs, and maps and time charts that guide readers through the chronology and geography of this part of the ancient Near East. The book addresses such essential art historical themes as the origins of narrative representation, the first emergence of historical public monuments and the earliest aesthetic commentaries. It explains how images and monuments were made and how they were viewed. It also traces the ancient practices of collecting and conservation and rituals of animating statues and of architectural construction. Accessible to students and non-specialists, the book expands the scope of standard surveys to cover art and architecture from the prehistoric to the Roman era, including the legendary cities of Ur, Babylon, Nineveh, Hatra and Seleucia on the Tigris.
Contents
Introduction: Becoming Art • The Search for Origins: Mesopotamia and the Cradle of Civilization • Uruk: The Arts of Civilization • Early Dynastic Sumer: Images for the People, Temples for the Gods • Early Dynastic Sumer: Art for Eternity • Art of the Akkadian Dynasty • Gudea: Royal Portraits and the Lifespan of Images • The Third Dynasty of Ur • The Age of Hammurabi • Kassite and Assyrian Art at the End of the Bronze Age • Assyrian Art: Narrative and Empire • Assyrian Art in Context • Babylonian Art • Achaemenid Persian Art • Alexander in Babylon and Hellenism in Mesopotamia: Seleucid and Parthian Art • Epilogue: The Past in the Present • Glossary * Further Reading * Sources of Quotations * Acknowledgments * Sources of Illustrations * Index
