| Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur | |
| A Special Exhibition Review by Stan Parchin |
About the show:
Remarkable Mesopotamian artworks from The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology returned to view at home (so to speak) this Spring before they embark again on at least two more legs of an unprecedented North American tour that began in 1998. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur will travel this Fall to The Saint Louis Art Museum, MO from October 21, 2005 to January 15, 2006. Thereafter, this show of more than 200 works from ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) will be exhibited at the Middlebury College Museum, VT from September 14 to December 10, 2006.
Ur, along with the city-states of Larsa, Uruk and Lagash, among others, comprised what can best be described as Sumer in the southeastern part of the Fertile Crescent, between and beyond the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in the Third Millennium B.C. An arid land with little stone and wood, its inventive architecture was made largely of mudbrick. Central to the city-states' organization was the ziggurat, a massive stepped temple dedicated to a deity. Its main purpose was religious as well as administrative.
Sumer's mainly agricultural society produced writing first (questionably) for record-keeping and taxation (definitely) using cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters created with a stylus in small, wet clay tablets. Cuneiform shapes also were used to record the Sumerians' religious and literary texts such as the heroic Epic of Gilgamesh. Once inscribed, the moist tablets were baked at high temperatures to harden them, thus preserving their contents.
The Sumerians created some of the most exquisite art of their time, much of it meant for religious and funerary purposes. Extraordinary objects in the exhibition date from Ur's Third Dynasty (2600 to 2500 B.C.), at the height of Sumerian culture. They were discovered in the late 1920s by renowned British archaeologist C. Leonard Woolley as part of a joint expedition by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, hence the trans-Atlantic division of many of Ur's magnificent artworks. It was Woolley who excavated Ur's Royal Cemetery, having uncovered the brilliant treasures of Queen or Lady Puabi. Ur, previously known only through Biblical accounts as the home of the patriarch Abraham, became a historical reality with Woolley's astonishing discoveries.
Silver Head of a Lion,
ca. 2650-2550 B.C.
Silver, lapis lazuli and shell (11 cm height, 12 cm width)
University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Silver Head of a Lion from the excavation, with its penetrating stare, is one of a pair presumably attached as an adornment to a wooden object long lost. Made of silver, shell and precious lapis lazuli, the artist represented an animal central to Sumerian mythology, perhaps having created a magical talisman to ward off evil. Subtle attention to detail is seen in both the lion's locks of hair and the intensity of its gaze, suggesting a fierce and menacing snarl.
Ram in the Thicket (or Ram Caught in a Thicket),
ca. 2650-2550 B.C.
Gold, silver, lapis lazuli, copper, shell, red limestone
and bitumen (42.5 cm height)
Found in the "Great Death Pit" at Ur
University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology
Ram Caught in a Thicket is actually a rearing goat. Discovered in the Royal Cemetery, the sculpture was found badly crushed. Modern restorers, working extensively from the artwork's only preserved photograph, determined the animal's gender by comparison with its companion in England. Standing erect and recently remounted properly against the gold-enhanced branches of a tree, this delicate work was probably part of a larger sculpture, perhaps a support for a table used in an elaborate Sumerian ritual. Recent scholarship indicates that it was not intended to be a freestanding sculpture. Within the context of Mesopotamian cosmology, Ram Caught in a Thicket is rich in symbolism. In a land dependent for its livelihood on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers' inundation, Sumerians were acutely concerned with animal fertility and the fecundity of vegetation. Hence the goat is surrounded by stylized rosettes representing Inanna, goddess of love, fertility and conversely, war. Such was the dual nature of many Sumerian deities, influenced by the region's sometimes unpredictable environment.
Headdress of the Lady Puabi,
ca. 2650-2550 B.C.
Gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian
(36 cm height of comb, 2.7 cm diameter of
hair rings, 11 cm diameter of earrings)
University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology
Lady Puabi was interred with numerous handmaidens. She was buried with the finest jewelry and accessories available at the time. Her ornate Headdress, made up of a comb, hair rings, three wreaths, a hair ribbon and double-lunate or crescent-shaped earrings, surmounted an elaborately braided coiffure (possibly a wig) known only from contemporary sculptural representations. It was made from gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian. The level of the headdress' artistic sophistication, with its floral imagery of gold willow and beech leaves, demonstrates Puabi's elevated place in Sumerian society. Seven gold rosettes, suspended over the headdress from a comb, once again reflect the Sumerian preoccupation with vegetation and fertility.
Great Lyre from the "King's Grave" (front view),
ca. 2650-2550 B.C.
Gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, bitumen and wood
(35.6 cm height of head, 33 cm height of plaque)
University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology
Aside from Puabi's magnificent headdress, perhaps the most spectacular of Woolley's finds was the Great Lyre from the "King's Grave" at Ur. The one in the exhibition and its counterpart in the British Museum were discovered in a death pit. Composed of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, bitumen and wood, other artworks indicate that Sumerian lyres were often eleven-string musical instruments played by both men and women. Attached to its front is a bull's head made of a wooden core covered by a gold sheet, embellished with lapis lazuli and shell. Underneath the twelve tightly curled locks of the bull's beard is a fascinating trapezoidal composition of contrasting shell and bitumen, arranged in four horizontal registers of decreasing width. The top scene is heraldic in nature, depicting a nearly nude, bearded male figure (probably semidivine) holding two rearing human-headed bulls, all shown in partial profile. The three remaining scenes represent a funerary banquet attended by animals in profile, some of whose limbs are human and perform ritualistic tasks. They include a butchering hyena, an animated ass playing an eight-stringed bull-headed lyre and a composite scorpion-man. His complex iconography was possibly borrowed from Elam in present-day southwestern Iran. The three lower registers are comical to the modern-day eye but were serious to the ancient Sumerian. The combination of human and animal features in some of the plaques' figures represents a Mesopotamian belief in power over the physical world by combination of various species' physical attributes.
The exhibition includes numerous examples of the Sumerians' resplendent artistic achievements in the design and creation of jewelry, metalware, stone vessels and weaponry. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur provides an unquestionably enlightened look at the accomplishments of an ancient Near Eastern civilization to which our own is eternally indebted.
About the catalogue:
Zettler, Richard L. and Lee Horne (eds.). Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur (exh. cat.). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998.
This 195-page catalogue, with color and black & white images of the artworks and Woolley's dig, magisterially documents the archaeologist's dig and its amazing discoveries. Richard L. Zettler describes Early Dynastic Mesopotamia and the Royal Cemetery of Ur with flair. And Holly Pittman interprets cylinder seals and brings to life the fascinating jewelry from the tomb of Queen or Lady Puabi.
For further reading:
Aruz, Joan (ed.). Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus (exh. cat.).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003.
This catalogue of a major special exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art reexamines many of the objects from Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, reunited with companion artworks from The British Museum. Ur and its art are described within the larger context of ancient Near Eastern civilizations during the Third Millennium B.C., demonstrating that there was great cultural cross-fertilization among the various peoples of the Fertile Crescent and its neighbors.
George, Andrew (trans.). The Epic of Gilgamesh.
New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.
"Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur" is on view through June 18, 2005 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (Telephone: 215-898-4000; Website: www.museum.upenn.edu).The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM and Sunday from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. REQUESTED admission is $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for senior citizens and students. Museum guides offer free tours of the galleries on most Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 PM. For a current schedule of tour topics, call the museum at 215-898-4015.
**************************
From your Guide: Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museum/Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in ancient, late-medieval and Renaissance art and history. His interests include: the art and culture of Old and New Kingdom Egypt; the Italian and Northern Renaissances; Church history; and witchcraft, heresy and social dissent in late-medieval and early Modern Europe.
See all Special Exhibition and Catalogue Reviews from Stan Parchin.
