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356 results for sumerian

editorial

Art for Resilience: Sumerian Standing Female Worshipper and More

December 21, 2020

By Kim Benzel and The Digital Editors

Met staff reflect on artworks that inspire resilience, from a Sumerian limestone statue to a contemporary collage by Wangechi Mutu.

Publication

"Domesticated Partners: A New Analysis of a Sumerian Vessel"

The Metropolitan Museum Journal is issued annually and publishes original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection. Highlights of volume 55 include an essay on Buddhist imagery in a medieval Chinese silk painted banner, a discussion of a rare 19th-century keyed guitar, and a contextualization of Ed Ruscha’s books of photographs of L.A. streets and gas stations of the 1960s and ’70s.

Essay

Mesopotamian Creation Myths

April 1, 2009

By Ira Spar

In Mesopotamia, the surviving evidence from the third millennium to the end of the first millennium B.C. indicates that although many of the gods were associated with natural forces, no single myth addressed issues of initial creation.

Essay

West Asia: Ancient Legends, Modern Idioms

October 1, 2004

By Salwa Mikdadi

After years of conflict and several wars, the landscape itself became a symbol for self-determination, the redefinition of identity, and resistance to occupation.

Essay

Flood Stories

April 1, 2009

By Ira Spar

Mesopotamian versions of the flood story may have had their beginnings in the annual spring flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Essay

Gilgamesh

April 1, 2009

By Ira Spar

No contemporary information is known about Gilgamesh, who, if he was in fact an historical person, would have lived around 2700 B.C.

Press Release

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Returns Sculptures to the Republic of Iraq

The return follows the launch of The Met’s Cultural Property Initiative, which includes a focused review of works in the collection and the hiring of a Head of Provenance and additional dedicated provenance researchers

The Met also recently initiated the repatriation of a third-millennium BCE Sumerian sculpture to the Republic of Iraq, after provenance research by Met scholars established that the work rightfully belongs to Iraq.

Essay

Mesopotamian Deities

April 1, 2009

By Ira Spar

Feared and admired rather than loved, the great gods were revered and praised as masters.

Essay

The Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods (2004–1595 B.C.)

February 1, 2017, revised May 23

By Elizabeth Knott

People of the ancient Near East inhabited a world that was saturated with supernatural powers, and the arts of the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods show the range of deities available to the individual as sources of protection and well-being.

Press Release