Introduction : becoming art -- The search for Origins : Mesopotamia and the cradle of civilization -- Uruk : the arts of civilization -- Early Dynastic Sumer : images for people, temples for gods -- ...

THE great and inventive people who settled 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (now part of Iraq), founded one of the world’s first major civilizations.

An Akkadian cylinder seal, circa 2350-2150 B.C.E., depicts a contest scene. The image on the right shows the impression the seal would make. Gift of Nanette B. Kelekian, in memory of Charles Dikran ...

Foundation figure in the form of a nail surmounted by the bust of a god (Sumerian, Early Dynastic III period, 2600–2300 BCE), copper alloy (courtesy private collection, via Morgan Library & Museum) ...

In their paper, “Exploring Geomagnetic Variations in Ancient Mesopotamia,” researchers Matthew D. Howland, Lisa Tauxu, Shai Gordin, and Erez Ben-Yosef studied 32 bricks currently held in the Slemani ...

FREDERICK N. BOHRER Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 383 pp.; 79 b/w ills. $95.00 DOUGLAS R. NICKEL ...

Assyrian cylinder seal from the late ninth to seventh centuries B.C.E., made of chalcedony and inscribed with a cultic scene. The image on the right shows the impression the seal would make. Gift of ...

When New Art’s Really Old: From the Valley of the Kings to Pompeii to a Rubens in a Paris Closet Wall Panel with a Striding Lion, neo-Babylonian period 605–562 B.C. Glazed brick. Object: H: 99.7 × W: ...

Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe. This week's featured art exhibition ...

In ancient times, Mesopotamia, meaning 'land between two rivers', was a vast region that lay between the Tigris and Euphrates river systems, and it is where civilization emerged over 7,000 years ago.