hi my name is Lola Palomo I am a singer
and an art historian and today I'll be
speaking to you about the art of
Mesopotamia the land between two rivers
the Fertile Crescent the cradle of
civilization
Mesopotamia has many names and many
objects to look at for us to learn more
about this very ancient time so we'll be
focusing on specific objects today and
going through the different
civilizations that make up Mesopotamia
and we will learn about how objects can
speak to us what they have to tell us
and also the main question today is how
is power shown through art so think
about this question and stick around for
more Mesopotamia the land between two
rivers let's get our bearings in terms
of where we are we are here between the
Tigris and the Euphrates we are in what
today is Iraq and Iran and part of Syria
and today we'll be speaking about
specific objects because it's such a
long long subject to speak about
Mesopotamia in around 10 minutes what
I've done is focused ourselves into four
different moments across objects so
we'll be seen the Sumerians, the  Akkadians
the Assyrians and the Babylonians
through objects that they have left us
and we can look at and mostly visit
today so when we talk about Sumer or the
Sumerian culture we're talking about
3500 or 4000 BCE and we have a culture
that is very much more towards a
religious head figure than a more belic 
or military figure so throughout this
presentation what I'll be asking you
like I said before is how is power shown
and what do these objects tell us so
let's say you get to the museum and you
start to see these small figures it says
Sumer Sumerian culture what does that
mean so what we're seeing here are small
worshippers in different sizes but
usually small and what we have is a
Sumerian culture that is very much
oriented towards
a leader that is the high priest more
than a leader that is the high military
ranking person so here you have another
example usually they are presented with
their hands clasped with their eyes in a
way looking up or it seems they're
worshiping and a lot of the times these
pieces are have names at the bottom for
them to be placed under temples and for
them to pray for whoever has made this
piece for eternity so there's a lot of
emphasis in the artwork in Sumer about
religion and about the worshipping or
the higher elements of religion for them
now a piece that I want to focus on and
that is very well known and that is at
the British Museum is a standard of Ur
it was found in Ur and it seems to have
been a small box you can kind of see it
here it's been recur and reconstructed
and we don't know exactly what it's for
but it does tell us a lot about society
so it's called it has two sides two main
long sides one is called the side of war
the other one is called the side of
peace and through these images we can
see a lot of things so let's focus on
peace first so this is a it's not called
an empire but it is obviously a
civilization and civilization means
there is a high stratification of
society and for Sumer and all the
Mesopotamian cultures to thrive it has
to be said there was a lot of slavery
going on so what you see here there is a
hierarchy of people at the top we see
whoever is the leader being served and
awaited from for by other less earlier
leaders at the end we see a lire and
somebody probably singing so even in
Sumer where there is a bit more of a
religious aspect to the pieces and to
power there is still a very clear
understanding and who is leader and who
is not so on the other side of this
piece of the standard we see what is
called the war side
and again we start to see what the
civilization entail war warring through
the different areas to gain power over
other areas so we have one two three
four five different carriages again we
can see who is the leader and who here
specifically we can see slaves that I've
been probably attained through war and
we see stratification we see the
warriors we have the leader who is
probably more still a a religious leader
but there is war going on so when we go
into the akkadian are the Akkadian
Empire we start to see how the warrior
element supersedes the more religious
elements so we start to see a lot of
pieces about war less so about religion
and we also start to see more realistic
figures now this is an important element
1 element like I said is how is power
shown throughout this region and the
Mesopotamian cultures also what you'll
see is that the more we have military
presence the more we have realism coming
in so this piece here has been
traditionally called
the head of Sargon it's probably not
Sargon who is who was the first leader
of the Akkadian Empire but the image
here is very very clear he is a powerful
man he has been mutilated by somebody
that came over to conquer him this is
not an artistic element
it was purposefully mutilated and we can
see it is a specific person that is very
important and then we have the Stele of
Naram-Sin who give the three yeah I
always get these names wrong yeah it's Naram-Sin
so this man here again like with
what we just saw
he is a specific military leader that
brought the Akkadian people's conquering
over another so let me get a closer look
what he is doing hist he is trampling
over people
you need to see it even more to get
closer and to get to the highest
position as a leader again you have a
higher and a bigger image of the leader
and a smaller image of his subdued
people and of the people that follow him
the military and at the top there are
two stars that are symbolizing religious
aspects religious deities so in
Mesopotamia it's very interesting to see
how there is a play between the leaders
being almost a God on earth and leaders
becoming more and more military in
nature and powerful so this is the Stele
where we can definitely see Akkadians are
an empire they want to conquer over the
others and the artwork starts to show
this very different from what we saw in
the Sumerians who yes they are a
civilization but they are not conquerors
as were the as sorry are the Akkadians
now the Assyrians bring it up a notch
even further in terms of civilization
and Empire they're going to be known as
very brutal and very yeah there-there is
no mercy from the Assyrian military and
we're going to focus on two things on
the Lamassu like you can see here and
then we're going to talk about one
specific relief so the Lamassu is an
ancient ancient type of it's an
imaginary figure that was created mostly
for palaces of the Assyrian Empire so
the bigger the empires grow the bigger
the artwork so now we no longer
have what are at the beginning the the so
called smaller temples or religious
temples these are these are basically
overpowered by palaces so now we have
palaces like huge ones that we no longer
can see but we can see elements that
have been brought into the museum's
especially the small Lamassu
smaller sized Lamassu so this one's at
the British Museum I believe this is
the Louvre and you can see they were at the
entrances of big palaces so the
Ziggurats  of the beginning of the
Sumerians
are basically overpowered by great
palaces and they want to show power now
let me show you they are half bull half
human half winged animal and this is a
deity that since it is all types of
living beings it's four legged
two-legged and winged it can protect of
all that can be bad so this was a deity
that was present at the beginning of the
Mesopotamian cultures in some areas but
it really got blown up literally later
on and you can see them here as a
reconstruction and many of these big
museums of the European continent and as
was the Metropolitan in New York and
here there is one in its original stance
they have been very much you know
they're up and the open so it's not very
easy to protect them but they still show
the magnificence that they they were
supposed to show us and it's very
interesting because you were you would
come up to the entrance you would be
greeted by these huge deities and they
would protect whoever was going through
and once you were walking by you would
see as if they were walking past you
because there was an extra leg so
there's five lengths and if there's this
illusion as if they were walking through
you so those are the Lamassu watch
out for them for the big museums and the
other one that I wanted to show you are
steli I'm sorry
these are reliefs that are throughout
many of these palaces of the Assyrian
Empire and what we'll see is that these
reliefs show stories again of the huge
military feats that have that have been
done by these leaders of the Assyrian
Empire the more military oriented an
empire is the more heightened will be
their leaders so here we have Ashurbanipal and what he is doing is he is
killing off a lion a lion could only be
killed off by the emperor by the person
that was at the highest rank so this was
a very long relief that is at
British that you can see but it's very
interesting that all of it is reenacting
a scene of a killing of lions that was
made within a structure so it was as if
the whole people of the Assyrian Empire
could see and watch the Great King be
overpowering over the lion and the lion
was the element or the symbol of nature
so if the emperor could overpower
himself over nature that meant he was
all-powerful
so it was demonstrating his military
capacity with all the people and the
military behind him but also almost
making himself as a deity like we saw
before so finally I want to show you an
even bigger example of how art equals
power in this Mesopotamian time and it's
through the Mesopotamian sorry the
neo-babylonian gate the Ishtar Gate now
this is originally in Baghdad which
means current a Iraq and it's about an
hour from there there's been a
reconstruction of this piece but it was
brought to Germany to the Pergamon
Museum in the 1930s so it was taken off
from the ruins that were there and it
was taken to the museum and today you
can see the reconstruction of this gate
now when I say this gate this is one of
eight gates to the great Babylon to the
city of Babylon of the Babylonian Empire
so if you were to be invited to this
place you would have seen eight gates
and this would be one of them and you
would have walked through this area here
this is a reconstruction and you can see
how on the sides there are even more
images to be seen and then you reach the
gate and it's a glowing blue so let me
show you what this reconstruction looks
like you have three different animals on
either sides and these animals represent
deities again this idea of the
Military leader the military power but at
the same time we have the religious
leader so how are these representative
of deity so first of all it's called the
ishtar gate and Ishtar's symbol is the
lion so you have Lions throughout the
walls of this gate here you have them on
the sides let me show you it would be
right here and they are on bricks that
have been glazed so they look like lapis
lazuli which is the blue stone very very
prominent within the Mesopotamian the
cultures but it is not lapis lazuli it
is a glazed brick so the Ishtar Gate it
has its name because of the goddess
Ishtar who was the goddess of war the
goddess of fertility but we have two
other animals here one is made up and
one is existence so the auroch is an
extinct type of cattle and it was a
deity Adád that was related to him this
was about the deity of the ebb and flow
the rivers and the water so basically
agriculture is what is being emphasized
here and to grow a city to grow an
empire you need nourishment and then you
have here an amazing feat of a deity and
it is partly the head and the neck of a
snake it has the front paws of a lion
the back paws of an eagle and perhaps
the tail of a scorpion and this is
called a Mushussu perhaps I'm not
sure the name but it is related to the
god Marduk and his son so you have three
different deities protecting the city's
gates and by the time you got to this
gate you were invited this was not a
military part of the gate were already
within the city walls so this has been a
very quick and succinct explanation of
what Mesopotamia
is as you can see there is a very broad
but constant idea of how you show power
is how your civilization thrives so at
the beginning we had more of a religious
 deity oriented art which meant
that the leader was more religious and
more and more as time went by and
empires grew the leader became more
military to the Assyrian climax into the
Babylonian expansion so I hope you
enjoyed this my favorite piece of the
Mesopotamian cultures is this ram on the
thicket which is Mesopotamian of the
Sumerian times so I hope you enjoy this
and I'll see you next time when we talk
about the Egyptians all the best take
care, bye!
