Transcription
Well, hello everybody. This is our first lecture for Art History Survey. During this course of lectures, we will cover something like over 30,000 years of art.
Well, needless to say, we'll slow down by the time we get to about 3000 BC or so. But then even after that, we'll be galloping through a considerable amount of information, but stopping for it stops where it's most important.
Well, here we begin, and we begin appropriately about 30,000 years ago. It's still the Ice Age in Europe, and humanity lives in caves. We were very fortunate to find those caves. A number of those caves now don't just exist in Europe; they also exist in Africa and Asia. But we'll be concentrating on the European ones.
The ones we'll be looking at particularly will be one called Chauvet, named after its discoverer, and another one is Lascaux, all of that in central southern France, or Altamira, which is in northwestern Spain.
What is astonishing is that at a very, very early age, back in 30,000 BC, humanity already had enough sophistication to abstract what they saw around them into pictures. Frankly, all art is abstracted to a certain degree, even the art that appears to us very natural, even photography.
A photograph takes a split moment of time, but then things change in real life. On the photograph, they will not, so that split moment of time is now abstracted from its reality. To a smaller or to a lesser or greater degree, that will be true for all art. The fact that humanity began to do it that early is very, very impressive.
Now, as I said, the important things we'll be looking at are these caves that I showed you. There's also a place called Willendorf, and that is in Austria, and that one is Cernavoda, Romania. So for now, these are the places we will go to.
You understand this is, of course, the map of here. Now, people lived in caves, as I said. The interesting part about it is that they lived in the entrance of the caves. While much art is found in the entrance, still a lot of it is also found along these tunnels, which are not easily accessible. One actually has to crawl there.
As a result of which, many questions, of course, came up as to what it was about. Why did they do it? Was it sympathetic magic? I draw a deer; a deer will appear to me. I discharge a stone at that deer; perhaps my real stone in life will reach the real deer, and I will kill him. Was it some sort of a cult? Was it anything else?
The question is, no one knows. There are a thousand theories, but no one knows exactly what this was about because this is the period of pre-history. What we call pre-history is the time essentially before writing. So everything before writing, we must rely on cave discoveries and attempt to use our common sense and hope that will connect us to the people who lived 35,000 years ago.
So we do not know. We will be looking. Let's see. This is, of course, these imaginations of what these people looked like, how they survived, what they did. Here are the cave dwellers. If you go to the New York Museum of Natural History, you'll find a whole section dedicated to prehistoric humans.
This is one of their exponents right here. The tools that they used were stone tools, of course. Roughly, this is a very, very rough division. In reality, the subdivision extends far, far greater. The very proximate division is lithic, is stone. So Paleolithic is paleo, is old, lithic, stone, old stone age.
These divisions are based on the use of tools. In the Old Stone Age, that is counted from 3 million BC to approximately 12,000 BC in Europe. Again, these divisions are different from different continents, and even in Europe, they are subdivided for different places.
Then the Mesolithic period, which is meso, is middle, lithic, stone. The Mesolithic period is the middle stone age, which lasted from about 12,000 to about 5,000. Finally, we come to Neolithic, which is the new stone age. The tools you see here are those of the Neolithic period.
Back to our cave. Here we are, and what we see are these extraordinary paintings that are clearly done with powdered ochre, either yellow or red, that perhaps was blown through a reed or blown through a hollow bone. Charcoal is also used, mixed perhaps with some fats so that it would adhere for outlines.
Even though you see a number of animals here, it's not necessary that they were all painted at the same time. It's very possible that generations after generations painted them on top of one another, and what we may see as a herd, in fact, may not have been original.
Now, the exact purpose, as I said, is really unknown. Evidence does suggest that they were not just done for decorative purposes, but again, you don't know. Sympathetic magic, as I said, a number of animals are depicted that were not eaten. In fact, the bears sometimes are depicted, and bison, and they are depicted as well, whereas that's not what people ate at the time.
What you see here, there's a bullock on the right and one on the left, clearly visible. What's interesting from our point of view, I might as well start throwing certain terminology at you, the point of view of a composition. Even now, it appears that the bullock, both of them, stand on a solid ground level.
What provides ground level is the rock itself; otherwise, they're really sort of floating in space. The form is very clearly depicted with, as I said, perhaps black charcoal. What we see as a slight modeling, meaning an appearance of three-dimensionality, is provided by the irregularity of the rock.
What we also see here is the so-called twisted perspective. We all know what perspective is. We look at something, and the way it appears to us, that's perspective. Now, if we were to look at this bullock from the side, in profile, as he stands, we would only see one horn.
However, the painters, whoever depicted this, wished for us to have as much information as possible. Horns, usually from, well, in our experience, or in the experience at least of the civilizations that we know about, because writing appeared about 3000 BC, so all these civilizations that we can read about, horns were associated with masculinity.
So it is possible then that they were associated with masculinity as well. Well, we are still in the pandemic, and I have my daughter here who helps me, of course, who set up this. She has some questions.
Hi everyone, I was just going to ask, is it that it's a flat drawing that just depicts multiple limbs? Because I know that's a later thing with the Egyptians, sure, drawing two arms even though you're only seeing the side of the body. But is that the case here? Because you look at the bull on the right, and his body is not completely parallel with the wall.
You see his front; you see both legs slightly. Yes, because you see the head sort of tilted. It just seems like it's not a complete parallel. I mean, did they? Because it seems like they knew perspective. I mean, it's not a flat image; it's slightly... I mean, even they continue it into the back legs.
I mean, you see one back leg and a phallus or an udder, whatever, like some opposed to phallus since it's a male bull. And then the other leg, there is a tilt too.
Well, that's what's called the twisted perspective because they didn't understand the perfect perspective, of course, but they wished to convey the idea of a bull very much, which they do. But they also wanted to give as much information about this bull as possible. As a result, parts of the body they would twist slightly so we see more of it.
Some theories hold that these paintings may have been a way of communicating with others. Other theories ascribe religious ceremonial purposes. As I have mentioned, they are very similar to these paintings around the world, and mostly animals are depicted.
When humans are depicted, it's usually hands or stick figures. Right, as it says here, you can see more of the hole, and you can see how the deformation of the rock, in fact, very much helps to model the figure. The rock too is polychrome; it's multicolored.
Now here again is our bull, and he comes from Altamira, from the cave in Spain. That's the plan of the cave that I showed you in the beginning. As you see, then either the bull was in fact painted on top of another animal, and you can see here the red ochre, or that other... no, probably the blue was painted on top of it because, as you see, the black line goes right above the other form.
Lascaux caves in the south of France, I was just talking about the twisted perspective. In most cases, it is very much the situation where the body is in profile, and about the horns, the legs, this is not necessarily so.
Whereas here, in fact, yes, there's more of a profile depiction. So there are always exceptions from the rules. These look like lionesses, bison, rhinoceros. The world was very different, of course, at the time. As I said, it was much, much colder.
People lived in caves, and all sorts of animals were around that have been extinct since. This is the case over the hand painting, and they're done in two ways: negative and positive.
So the negative, you see the white impressions; that's why your hand is placed against the wall, and then the powder is blown around it, thus providing sort of a negative space where the color did not hit. On the other hand, there are positive impressions as well, and that is presumably where an outline was done overhand, and then the inside was painted.
So this negative-positive impression we will meet with again, whether in painting or in sculpture. Here, in Chauvet, in the caves, this is a hunting scene, and you see here that people are very much presented as stick figures.
So while animals are very well depicted to a great deal of observation, the human figure is entirely obstructed and essentially presented to us. Of course, we understand it's a human figure, but they were clearly not interested in any degree of naturalistic depiction of men.
One of the most famous images in art history is the so-called Venus of Willendorf. She's called Venus of Willendorf because she was found in Austria. Now, I'm pronouncing, I know I have an accent, but in German, it would be Willendorf. In English, of course, it's Willendorf.
Well, so either pronunciation is fine, but obviously, the people who made her do not call her that. These female figurines are very common, in fact, everywhere throughout Europe, in the Near East, Asia, and in Africa. They're just very, very common.
In fact, at this date, and you see it's about 30,000 BC, we don't really see male figures, but we see a lot of female figures. They were all nude. The 19th-century scholars, once they began to find them, just uniformly called them Venuses because Venus is like Venus in Latin, Aphrodite in Greek, is the goddess of love, the goddess of procreation, and the goddess of fertility.
Every civilization had a goddess of fertility because procreation was incredibly important. Well, no less for these people than for those who lived 20,000 years later. Life was very, very hard; child mortality was tremendous.
So I gather there would be female mortality in childbirth. Women died in childbirth; men died hunting, fighting. It was very important to produce new life, and because a female body, in fact, does produce new life, it is very possible that that is why these figures appear.
If you look at this very closely, what's really emphasized are the procreative parts of the body. The breasts are enormous; the stomach is considerably larger than it would have been even during normal pregnancy, while the tiny little arms right there above the breasts are inconsiderable.
The pubic area is emphasized, whereas her brain isn't. No one needed the brain. What she has on her head, it's either hair or some sort of a hat; we don't really know. The legs again are practically non-existent.
So what's really emphasized and clearly respected are the procreative elements of her anatomy. Now, while she is composed of these, of these, I mean, art historically, very stylistically very impressive ovals and all voids, in fact, she appears quite large, but she's actually quite small.
And then there she is. She can fit into one's hand. Parts of the body associated with fertility, possibly fertility fetish figure, has no visible face, right? We talked about that.
And there you have her from every side. As I said again, she is a very famous image, and anyone who begins the study of art history, and that is with the art history from the very beginning, will know about her.
The original is in Vienna, in Austria, but again, the New York Natural History Museum has a copy. She's very popular, so people actually make snow penises in the winter, which is adorable.
Also, an interesting part is that when a hundred years ago, when one was looking for different ways of representation, with the advance of modern art and the search for new forms, because the old forms, ever since the Renaissance, became... well, one became perhaps tired of them and was looking for a new expression.
One went back into very, very ancient times to look for those forms, to look for forms that were not guided by correct rules of the Renaissance. Here, for instance, is an example, a rather famous Russian sculptor, Alexander Hitenko, who a hundred years ago also produced his own Venus.
Clearly, he also was not interested in what she had to say because, as you see, the face and the head are hollow. Just to show you a number of other similar images that come from different parts, they all still emphasize very much the procreative parts of the body.
There is one such figurine that comes from the Czech Republic, and it's actually ceramic. It's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, known ceramic in the world, and it predates the firing of clay.
So whatever temperature, whatever fire they used was very low, not the real firing of clay. Here she is again from back, from the side, and same thing here. This one is in baked clay. Now she's considerably later; she's 6,000.
But as you see, these things really don't change because the priorities of procreation remain very much with us. She is called a seated woman. She's not just a seated woman; she's also a birthing woman.
She's in fact birthing a child, and you can see the head between her legs. The reason you see the head and one of the felines sort of different plates is because they were restored later.
Still another one from Sicily, so you see it's just throughout all these years, 20,000 years, humanity continued to produce a nude female, and it will continue to produce a nude female into our own times.
Purposes may shift; aesthetics definitely shift; rules shift; tastes shift. But the principle remains the same: the female body, whether appearing creative or lovely and wistful, as in Botticelli, still holds a great interest for humanity and for the artists.
Now, these two are fascinating because they differ considerably from the procreative purpose that we've been seeing, and they come from Romania. The man is called the Thinker, sort of after that, and the woman is just a seated woman.
This is really the first time when it appears that psychological elements have now entered art and that art perhaps is produced as art for art's sake rather than for a certain definite purpose. In fact, it looks tremendously modern.
When Cezanne issued his famous dictum about everything being reduced to cubes, cones, and spheres, I mean, here's a good example. To our modern eyes, unquestionably, they appear very attractive.
This comes from about 3,500 BC. By this time, civilization is pretty much in full development in the Near East, in the areas of Mesopotamia, today's Iraq, and Egypt. We will travel to Mesopotamia.
You mentioned Cezanne and how it looks like something he would do, but if Cezanne were to do this, he would do this with a bottle of champagne and a lovely street outside and food in his belly. I mean, they look so desolate, correct?
Yes, these people do look desolate; it's very true. They would have been carved by people who had nothing. I mean, they had fire, hopefully. Yes, the idea that they were struggling to survive and that every moment that they were not sleeping or eating, they were trying to find more food or more shelter, and that they actually took the time out of that to express their loneliness and their sorrow, I mean, that gives it a whole new level.
Which simply can't... like, no, of course, in modern art, you express your inner desolation, but it's not the same as it was the desolation of their entire being. I mean, their inside and their outside, they were struggling to survive, but they took time out of their daily struggle to create art.
That's true; really cool, right? Yes, definitely. Cezanne created his art, his paintings, in great comfort over a wealthy lifestyle.
Right, so I mean, sure, it could have conveyed the inner anguish, but just the technicality of it, even just that someone said, "You took the time. I'm cold, I'm hungry, and I'm scared." Instead of just focusing on making sure that I get less cold, less hungry, and less scared, I want to commit this to memory and create something that someone will remember how I felt.
That's insane. That is, that's right. But there's a human being who did that once, that's true, 5,500 years ago.
And thus, as I said, we go now, we jump over. Well, actually, we have arrived now. We have arrived to 3,500 BC, so it's a good time to go to the Near East.
We'll be looking at the two cultures that were of tremendous importance for later European civilization and, of course, the development of art in Europe. The two cultures are Mesopotamia, and it's right here, it's today's Iraq, and Egypt, right there.
Now, Mesopotamia, remember our Mesolithic period, which is between the period in between. So Mesopotamia, potamos is a river; Mesopotamia is two rivers. One river is Tigris, and the other Euphrates. Tigris is easy to remember, closer to the India where tigers roam, and Euphrates, EU, closer to Europe.
So that's how I remember this a long, long time ago. The land between two rivers is called Mesopotamia, and here it is. This is where we are about to go. It's called today the Fertile Crescent because everything underneath the crescent is desert.
Everything above is barely habitable as well, but this, the area between the rivers and into Palestine, it's sort of shaped like a crescent, and this is where civilization began. It's called the Fertile Crescent, and we are in a period between 3,500 and 2,500 BC.
But even there, it began really at the Persian Gulf right there at the sort of the deltas because both the Tigris River and Euphrates River flow north-south, while the Nile flows south to north. The civilizations begin right here.
Now, it's good to remember that the Persian Gulf at that time extended considerably further northwest. So at that time, Tigris and Euphrates did not yet form a mutual bond. We go to the civilization of Sumer. We have no idea where they came from. They were not a Semitic people.
They established a sort of confederation of cities. They were not a united kingdom or a federal society in any way. Each town had its own government, its own king, its own god, and its own structures. The most important of them, as you see, well, they'll be looking at, and with time, Lagash, Umma, Kish, Babylon will, of course, be very, very important.
That's where we go. Mesopotamia, this is how you spell it. We'll look through several periods. Unlike Egypt, that sort of had a unified culture for 3,000 years, oh, maybe 2,000, Mesopotamia, well, the culture was the culture itself.
The writing, the alphabet, was, and the art forms were very similar, but different tribes replaced previous tribes. As a result, the first, the third millennium is Sumer, Sumer, Lagash, Lagash right here, so it's Sumer, Lagash, and Akkad.
We don't know where Akkad is; it hasn't been found. We suspect that it is the same place as that it lies underneath Babylon. But the first, I mean, excuse me, the third millennium BC, those three cities dominate the scene.
Then in the second century, Babylon will dominate, and then after that, into the first millennium, Assyria, and then, of course, we're going to Greece, Alexander the Great, etc. So let us begin with Sumer. Probably the most revolutionary, the most extraordinary things that the Sumerians did by the year 3000.
So already in the perhaps in the late fourth millennium, they began to record things. They began to write them down, and they did it with a sharpened reed that they called a stylus. Here, but here's one of them. There were clearly many variations, and they did it on clay tablets while these clay tablets were still wet.
Then these clay tablets would dry in the sun or be fired in the kiln. They could break, but they still were sort of indestructible because even when they broke, many of them are broken, the ones that we found, but they could still be put together.
Yes, it's actually so cool because we talk about, of course, the loss of the great library of Alexandria, which I know you'll talk about later, and how much knowledge was lost. But when we talk about, for example, the library of Ashurbanipal, a lot of it is intact.
It's shattered, and it will be the bane of many archaeologists' existence to come as they pick through the world's worst puzzle and try to put it all back together. But it exists; I mean, it's not lost to history. The fact that it was put on clay means that it has endured.
Yes, the world's worst puzzle. Yes, and they kind of even developed a rather simplistic form of democracy. But it's fascinating to know about the Sumerian culture, and there are books that are named the same way.
So the name Sumerians invented everything. They, of course, invented the potter's wheel and the wheel in general. All of that was invented in Sumeria. They were great engineers; they were the first irrigators.
They watched; they were sky watchers, and they could predict certain natural occurrences by their observation of the sky. They had schools; they had courts. They lived a life that is very familiar to us.
They had hate mail; they had fake names. They are literally letters, yes, on texting, like a Yelp review, where one guy writes to another guy, "Your week is just the worst possible week I have ever had the misfortune of receiving, and I will not be sending you the allotted amount of money for your terrible wheat, and I'm letting everyone know how bad your wheat is."
So there, and there's another one where a man writes to a concubine. He wrote through saying, "I thought that I was your favorite supplicant, and I hear now that you wander the river with so-and-so, my greatest rival. You have until the fifth moon to collect your beautiful sandals, lest I donate them to the temple."
I mean, the equivalent of "Come pick up your stuff right now, and then get out of here." Right? It's so funny.
So just before this period, during the Neolithic, the so-called Neolithic Revolution, I mean, it began during the Mesolithic period, but really the Neolithic Revolution, between 12,000 and 5,000 BC, there was a great global warming all around.
People came out of the caves, and slowly but surely, now I'm talking about thousands of years, but hunting and gathering was then changed to cultivation and cultivation of wild grain, cultivation of animals, to sedentary existence as opposed to nomadic existence.
That, of course, created a completely new society because while the hunters and gatherers pretty much shared everything they had, now hierarchical levels of society began to establish themselves. But that also was the time of first settling in villages, then from the villages to small towns, small towns to larger cities, and definitely the cities like Ur and Uruk were fairly large cities and quite sophisticated cities.
So vector writing clearly also began as a pictograph, and here is just a very rough example of what it may have been. Here you have the development from, for instance, a bull's head, and it looks like a bull's head.
With time, it was just inconvenient to draw a bull's head, and it was much more convenient to do shorthand with the stylus. Shorthand that turned out to be this. So if this is 3000, this is 2500 BC.
Then by the time of the Assyrians, we get something like this that can mean not just a bull; it can perhaps mean a whole herd. The bull fell over; that's true. It could mean grazing lands. I mean, it could mean who knows, but here's a bowl.
Then again, finally, it abstracted itself into meaning bread, into meaning food, into meaning dinner, into meaning again various combinations of things. So the pictograph developed into a so-called cuneiform. Cuneiform is wedge writing because when that stylus makes a mark on wet clay, it looks like a wedge, as you see here.
Thus developed the Mesopotamian uniform, and whoever, whatever civilization will replace the previous one will still be using uniforms, sort of as whether it's English or German or French or Italian, we're still using the same alphabet.
The concepts now became syllabic and, in fact, well, with time, alphabetic. I hear a head and bowl, which will develop into a concept of eating. Lower Mesopotamia did not have any stone; they didn't have stone.
They didn't really have much wood. Everything had to be brought in. The wood had to be brought in from Lebanon; stone had to be brought either from Egypt or from the northern areas, from the country or from the mountains.
So they developed, they fired brick, and they built everything in brick, whether it was fire brick or sun-dried brick. It was brick. The closest thing today that I could find is there is a village in Morocco, which is a UNESCO site, and it's a fortified village made entirely in clay.
Oh, that's very cool. Yes, oh wow. This is contemporary; one can actually go visit. That's crazy.
So this is our best idea, perhaps, of what these towns may have looked like. We also have to keep in mind that they were probably painted because all ancient civilizations loved color.
So they would probably go to town painting these surfaces in various colors. Here are these examples of mud bricks; that's what they call mud bricks. Today, also, you go to Egypt, for instance, you see a lot of mud brick constructions as well.
And here's our town. However, these are reconstructions, of course, these artistic reconstructions of what these towns may have looked like, or who knows. But these are around the central area; there are these mud brick buildings.
But in the center, there would be an admin; there would be a palace; there would be a king's palace, and of course, a temple and a priestly court. So the temple would look like this. It's called a ziggurat; it's a stepped pyramid.
If it looks to you like something we have in this America, you're right; it does. These ziggurats come in different heights, different shapes, and they were essentially solid brick because from wherever the people came, the scenarios clearly, their gods lived on high, as gods often do.
Think of Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive his Ten Commandments, Mount Olympus. And then I'm seeing another example. Oh, another one, of course, another example, of course, is the Mount Olympus, the bunch of gods sitting on a very climbable mountain.
No questions still up there. Yeah, Roman temples were also built up in there. So I was not saying that Moses climbed Mount Olympus. You look so... you look very concerned.
I know because I'm sort of with my... sorry, sorry. Okay, the gods live on high, and Mesopotamia and that particular area on this planet is very, very flat, no mountains.
So they created their own mountains, and for easier access, they created them as step pyramids with the courses of stairs leading up to every level. As I said, the kingly palace would be there, or the priesthood would live there. All kings' attendants would live there.
I mean, cities developed, and as cities developed, there is a division of labor. One just can't help it. So the surrounding area feeds the city. This city now has professions and produces commodities, which now the city can export, and thus civilization develops.
Here, for instance, we'll see it again. This is an image of ancient Babylon, and here it's illustrated there. I got it from Archaeology Illustrated by a very, very marvelous artist who is a brilliant artist, and he does these recreations of ancient civilizations, which are very compelling.
Here, he recreates ancient Babylon. Sitting here is the river, and that ziggurat was the tallest. As you see, very often the ziggurats were in different colors.
The lower courses would be brown, black, then white, and blue, red. Ancient civilizations liked color very, very much. This is the complex, the palatial and priestly complex, and then mud brick dwellings over there.
Now, let's see. First, we're going to go to the town of Uruk, right there above Ur, and there was built the most ancient ziggurat. Today, it's called the White Ziggurat, and it is determined that it was in fact built between 3500 and 3000 BC.
It is in, of course, it's a Missouri state; it's been 5,000 years, but this is what we have of it. The reconstruction was possible, so this is what it looks like in reconstruction. There was one solid base right here of just solid brick, and then the steps would lead up, and the temple would be on top.
Only a king or priests would be allowed into the temple. Now, these were, of course, all polytheistic societies, so every town would have different gods. Again, the colors are different between the base and the temple.
Here is another reconstruction, which is contaminated. We don't know what these temples looked like. You see, we have descriptions, but still, that's not as accurate as, of course, we would have known otherwise.
But it was fairly, it was maybe 100 feet, the whole structure, 150. As I said, it's very old; it goes back to 3500 BC. On the other hand, the next town, the town of Ur, where presumably Abraham came from, Abraham of the Bible, well, today it is slightly controversial because Abraham was a nomad, and Ur was a place of very civilized people.
So he would either have to change his lifestyle entirely to a nomadic lifestyle, which is unlikely, or perhaps he came from somewhere else on the Euphrates River, perhaps Mari, which was under the domination of Ur at the time, which is more likely.
But the Bible tells us, or here, but that also might mean Ur, the whole territory that was under the influence of Ur. We go to Ur, and now a ziggurat was built by the millennium, maybe more later.
It is considerably taller, and it is clear that a great deal of vegetation was planted on the platforms of the ziggurat, which is why ultimately the Babylonian Hanging Gardens come from. I mean, they're terraced gardens essentially, and the vegetation was tremendous.
I mean, today it's all very bare, but these people were extraordinary botanists, agronomists, and they brought the river from... they brought the water from Euphrates through very, very sophisticated irrigation canals and pulleys and lifts everywhere, whether on top of the mountain or in between.
So this is the ziggurat of Ur, and as you see, it now has one, two, three, four platforms, and then the temple is on top. Here is another recreation that perhaps is clearer.
As you can imagine, one did not need treadmills if one just wanted some exercise under a very, very hot sun. Even though you're not allowed into the temple proper, no one forbids you essentially from walking up and down those steps.
The steps were steep, like Mesoamerica. Unfortunately, this is what's left today, and it's not even due to natural destruction. When Mesopotamia was discovered in the 19th century, the British were there first.
I mean, they saw these mounds and didn't quite know what they were, but then they sort of began to pick here and pick there, and then these mounds turned out to be these ziggurats or they covered ancient cities or what have you.
At first, it was unclear to them what the top of the mound was, and so the top was destroyed. In the end, the top was destroyed, and we only have the base. So the height is speculative; presumably, it's about 210 feet high, but it's speculative because, again, we don't have the top of it.
Whereas the White Ziggurat is probably 100, a little more than 100. This is what it looks like from the air, and these are the staircases that lead you to the temple. Very often, glazed tiles were used for decoration.
They were not just somber brick; they were always decorated, and often beautiful glazed tiles were used for that purpose. You can see them here recreated. Oh, that's stunning.
I know, oh wow. And again, as I said, remember, different layers would be done in different colors. A fascinating find under one of the temples in Sumer was of these 12 figurines, 10 male, 2 female.
Despite the fact that the Sumerians were writing at the time, they really don't know. Do they represent gods? Do they represent worshipers? Most probably worshipers. They probably were votive figurines, votive meaning someone wants to worship God.
Obviously, someone is busy; he cannot be there, she all the time. Therefore, this someone will place a votive figurine in the temple that with very large open eyes, forever aware and constantly praying and constantly expressing its devotion to the deity.
So possibly that's what they were. Men have very long curled beards. The women, there's one woman and another woman; they have sort of off-the-shoulder garments. Most of them are standing; there's somewhere there was a child next to one of the women, but only feet remained.
The eyes, well, it became very much a tradition in Mesopotamian society to convey these eyes very, very large and very open. So these may be the votive figurines.
Now, just as we discussed prehistoric art and those beautiful, and our Thinker and the seated woman from Romania, these two look very modern. These two look very cylindrical, very cubic, and that's what they are.
As I said, Mesopotamians did not have stone; they did not want to waste stone that they did import. Therefore, most of these figurines are made of clay.
Also, imagine that they were perhaps all painted. Here, this gives you the range of height, and eight of the figurines made from gypsum, which is kind of sort of like asphalt-like material appearing in nature.
Then two limestone, and one is from alabaster. Alabaster is the most expensive stone. This may be alabaster. He is the only... he may be a priest; he's the only one.
He's clearly male, but he has not a hair, no beard, not a hair. I mean, on what he said, no beard. So perhaps he may be actually a votive. What if he would have a priest?
They are called the horde discovered in the temple dedicated to the god, and who was the Near Eastern god of fertility? We'll be returning to fertility many, many, many times because, as I talked in the beginning, fertility was of great importance, whether among humans or in the fields, wheat and barley.
A female head in marble was discovered also during the excavations prior to 3000 BC. That also has these enormous eyes. The parting in the head probably indicated the groove.
The groove, that's what I should say. The groove on her head was probably the place where hair was attached because she was not just left to be like that. The brows would probably be filled with bitumen, which is sort of a black viscous material.
Would the hair have been real hair, or would it not be? No, but probably a gold plate. Gold, probably gold plate that could be hair with like... I'll show you.
Okay, so, and the eyes also would be a shell, maybe used, or a shell, and then for pupils, who knows? Precious stone could be used, semi-precious stone could be used. The celebration stone, malachite, could be used for green, like lapis for blue, whatever color eyes they wanted.
Bootyman, again, for black eyes. So it's quite lovely. Now, here is what she may have looked like. Now, this was prepared in fact for the headdress, but this is what our lady here may have looked like when she was finished.
Because the Sumerians, all ancient people, loved jewelry and loved precious objects. Here is this beauty in... it's either her natural hair or it's a wig. In Egypt, it would be a wig.
Then the headdress is made of gold leaf and precious stones, which is quite amazing. One can actually see it in the University of Pennsylvania because the University of Pennsylvania participated in excavations.
So here is what this would look like. Now, it is fascinating to see how it was found. The skull was crushed, and then the jewelry was scattered around the skull, as you see.
So this skull was kind of glued together by the archaeologists, just as everything was found in its find site. It was preserved as is, glued together, and as is sent to London.
It was already in London that the glue was picked apart, and the skull was restored, and so was the headdress restored as well. I think it was the British Museum in combination with the University of Pennsylvania that did the excavations.
Therefore, some artifacts are in the British Museum, and others are at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Another brilliant artifact is this lyre.
Now, all of these are found in royal graves because what Mesopotamia did not have the same idea of the next life as the Egyptians, but they had clearly some sort of an idea because the royal graves had a great horde of things that one uses during a lifetime.
Here, for instance, also at that time, third millennium, fourth millennium, they also practiced human sacrifice. So when the king died, a number of his servants would be killed with him or her.
In this case, this is a lyre; it's called the Bull's Lyre because, as you see in front, is the head of a bull. Yes, no, is this only for kings or for royals? Because you said him or her; was it also for queens?
Okay, no, I was just wondering. So there's a bull's lyre, and the image of a bull will be very, very important in all civilizations because a bull, just as a lion, represents power, represents royalty, represents fearlessness.
So we'll see bulls a lot. So this is a bull. What we see here is a sheet of gold right there that is shaped around a wooden head.
So sheet gold shaped around a wooden head. The beard on the bull is lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli was extremely expensive. It's called semi-precious stone, but it's one of the more precious of the semi-precious stones, as opposed to malachite, for instance, which was very common.
And same eyes that we see here, very large eyes and gilded horns with perhaps lapis tips. The body of the lyre, of course, is restored, is reconstructed.
Now, the soundboard itself, as you see, is trapezoidal, and it has shell plaques that show various mythological object scenes. We don't exactly know again what they refer to.
It's very possible that they come from the great Epic of Gilgamesh that was written long before Homer put together his Iliad and Odyssey. The Epic of Gilgamesh comes from Sumer and was presumably composed about 2500 BC.
It's the first literary epic that we possess, and it's possible. I mean, there's a scorpion man, and scorpions appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Then there's the master of animals. I mean, it is symmetrical, identical on each side, and usually, the animals are in a standing position.
But then again, they could just be describing folk tales where animals behave as humans. Our folk tales, Aesop, of course, the Greek tale writer. Here we have the lyre, similar to ours, a bull lyre.
The bear is stabilizing, and what the wolf or somebody is playing, then he, you know, this one, I think, is a wolf with a knife, and he is carrying a table with various foods.
And then the lion, part of the wrap, is carrying a jug of wine. So that's... you don't know what it is, but it's fascinating. Now, it's done, of course, everything is flat.
There's no modeling. What I was talking about originally, there's no three-dimensionality. Everything is very flat. Another fascinating object that also was found completely flat and scratched, so to speak, is this ram or billy goat.
It's also some sort of votive sculpture. Now, billy goats, of course, are notorious for their fertility, and because fertility was so important, so clearly, every animal that designated fertility would be emphasized.
There is our billy goat offering stand, presumably to a male fertility god, Tammuz, but we can't be sure. From about the middle of the third millennium, he is... I think I have the information here.
He is in our profile, so head and legs in gold leaf, as is the tree. The tree itself, I mean, it's hammered gold again around the wooden trunk, so to speak.
Now the horns again and fleece, lapis lazuli, and the body fleece is made actually of shell attached to a thicker coat of glutamine, and genitals are gold, but the belly was silver plate, but it's lost, unfortunately.
Now, bootyman, known as asphalt or tar, is a black oily viscous form of petroleum, a naturally occurring organic byproduct of decomposed plants. Well, there you go.