Transcript Ancient Near East

Module One - Review
Art 1010 – TICE
Wasatch High School
 Victory
Stele of Naram-Sin (Ancient Near
East)
 Stele of Hammurabi (Ancient Near East)
 Ziggurat of Ur (Ancient Near East)
 Seated Scribe (Ancient Egypt)
 Seated Ramses II (Ancient Egypt)
 The Last Judgment of Hunefer (Ancient
Egypt)
 Colossal head of Olmec

Mesopotamian and Egyptian artists represented the human body in a
stylized fashion, often forcing the feet, torso and head into their most
recognizable point of view.

Mesopotamian people, who were mainly engaged in agricultural and
merchant vocations, lived close to the natural world and depicted
animals in a more naturalistic fashion than humans.

Mesopotamian people invented writing, although the majority of people
were illiterate. Art was often used to record important events or
representations of important concepts. Mesopotamian people used art to
teach about their belief in the divine power of their kings and to instill a
uniform code of laws.

Mesopotamian and Egyptian patrons, who paid artists to make art, were
wealthy members of the nobility and/or religious elite.

Many works of Egyptian art show the religious and political power of the
pharaohs. Ancient Egyptians thought of the pharaohs as living gods. The
Egyptian artistic tradition had specific rules about representing pharaohs
that emphasized their perfect unchanging nature. Representations of
ordinary people were more flexible and varied
 reigned
ca. 2254–2218 BCE
 he was the first Mesopotamian king known to
have claimed divinity for himself
 controlled a large portion of land along the
Persian Gulf
 founder of the Akkad Dynasty that was
headquartered in Akkad, a city somewhere in
northern Babylonia




After a major military victory the king is portrayed,
bow in one hand, arrow in the other, climbing a
mountain which was strewn with the corpses of his
fallen enemies.
The figure of the king in this sculpture is not only
much larger than all the others but he is shown
crowned with a horned helm, the symbol of divinity.
In the sky above Naram-Sin are two stars representing
the gods; who have now taken on a supporting role to
the king.
What makes this king different from his predecessors
in Mesopotamia is this king's clear historical record
and the unmistakable references to his divine status
A
stele is a monument composed of a single
column or shaft typically erected to
commemorate an important event or person.
 Naram-Sin's title was "King of the Four
Quarters" meaning "Ruler of the World.“
 Damaged on both the top and bottom,
Naram-Sin's stele depicts the king's defeat of
the Lullubi peoples of present-day Iran.
Victory Stele of
Naram-Sin,
Akkadian, pink
limestone, 22542218 B.C.E.
(Louvre, Paris)
 is
a well-preserved Babyloian Law Code,
dating back to about 1772 BC
 It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of
significant length in the world
 The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi,
enacted the code, and partial copies exist on
a human-sized stone stele and various clay
tablets.
 The Code consists of 282 laws, with scaled
punishments, adjusting "an eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth“ as graded depending on
social status, of slave versus free man
1792-1750 BCE
Ziggurats were massive structures built in the
ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian
plateau
 Ziggurats are, architecturally, the Mesopotamian
equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids: large
artificial square mountains of stone. They are
equally ancient. But there are two differences: a
ziggurat was not a tomb but a temple
 They were always built by kings. In third
millennium BCE Mesopotamia, there was a
conflict between the two great organizations,
the temple and the palace. By building
ziggurats, the king showed that he could perform
more impressive religious deeds than the
priesthood.

The Ziggurat at Ur, a massive stepped pyramid
about 210 by 150 feet in size, is the most wellpreserved monument from the remote age of the
Sumerians
 The ziggurat was part of a temple complex that
served as an administrative center for the city
 The ziggurats were meant to be meeting places
between heaven and earth and thus, the stairs
that came about as a result of construction were
able to be traversed by humans.
 Around 2100 B.C., southern Mesopotamian cities
came under the control of Ur-Nammu, ruler of
the city of Ur.

 Modern
name of an ancient Egyptian funerary
text
 Text consists of a number of magic spells
intended to assist a dead person’s journey
through the underworld and into the afterlife
 The path to the afterlife as laid out in the
Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The
deceased was required to pass a series of
gates, caverns and mounds guarded by
supernatural creatures
 He
was considered the greatest, most
celebrated, and the powerful pharaoh of the
Egyptian Empire
 Ruled Egypt from 1279 BC to 1213 BC
 The early part of his reign was focused on
building cities, temples and monuments
 Ramses erected monuments up and down the
Nile river in tribute to his victory over the
Sumerians
 About
4,600 years old
 Very informal sculpture, not rigid
 Not a king, but extremely important because
he could write
 Meant for the interior of a tomb – the
afterlife
 The sculpture was discovered in 1850 and
dated to the period of the 4th Dynasty, 2620–
2500 BCE. It is currently part of a permanent
collection of Egyptian antiquities in the
Louvre Museum in Paris.
 The
Olmec was one of the earliest
civilizations to develop in the Americas.
 The most famous of the La Venta
monumental artifacts are the four colossal
heads. Seventeen colossal heads have been
unearthed in the Olmec area, four of them at
La Venta – they measure 9 feet tall
 Made out of stone and weighing several tons,
there is great speculation on how the Olmec
moved them (it was 3,000 years ago)
Amenophis IV
The Seated Scribe
1353 – 1337 BC, Egypt
2620 – 2500 BC, Egypt