Epochs · Mesopotamia & Persia
Ancient Near East
c. 3500 BCE – 330 BCE
Tour this roomYour taste…
Between the Tigris and Euphrates, the first cities produced the first monumental art: temple offerings, royal steles and palace walls. Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian artists told stories of kings and gods in stacked registers of relief, and glazed brick turned city gates into processions of dragons and lions. Their images of power, war and the hunt shaped the art of every empire that followed.
Hallmarks
- Narrative relief in horizontal registers
- Kingship, war and the royal hunt
- Glazed brick and inlaid shell and lapis
- Text and image combined on steles
Artists here
