The art of Mesopotamia has survived in the record from early hunter-gatherer societies (8th millennium BC) on to the Bronze Age cultures of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. These empires were later replaced in the Iron Age by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia brought significant cultural developments, including the oldest examples of writing.
The art of Mesopotamia rivalled that of Ancient Egypt as the most grand, sophisticated and elaborate in western Eurasia from the 4th millennium BC until the Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered the region in the 6th century BC. The main emphasis was on various, very durable, forms of sculpture in stone and clay; little painting has survived, but what has suggests that, with some exceptions,Frankfort, 124-126 painting was mainly used for geometrical and plant-based decorative schemes, though most sculptures were also painted. Cylinder seals have survived in large numbers, many with complex and detailed scenes despite their small size.
Mesopotamian art survives in a number of forms: cylinder seals, relatively small figures in the round, and reliefs of various sizes, including cheap plaques of moulded pottery for the home, some religious and some apparently not.Frankfort, Chapters 2–5 Favourite subjects include deities, alone or with worshippers, and animals in several types of scenes: repeated in rows, single, fighting each other or a human, confronted animals by themselves or flanking a human or god in the Master of Animals motif, or a Tree of Life.Convenient summaries of the typical motifs of cylinder seals in the main periods are found throughout in Teissier
Stone stelae, votive offerings, or ones probably commemorating victories and showing feasts, are also found from temples, which unlike more official ones lack inscriptions that would explain them;Frankfort, 66–74 the fragmentary Stele of the Vultures is an early example of the inscribed type,Frankfort, 71–73 and the Assyrian Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III a large and well preserved late one.Frankfort, 66–74; 167
Prehistoric Mesopotamia
The highland regions of Mesopotamia were occupied since the Neanderthal times, for example at the site of Shanidar Cave (65,000–35,000 years ago), but with no known artistic creation. The first artistic productions of Mesopotamia appear in the area of Upper Mesopotamia only, at the end of the Neolithic during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period, with simple representations of humans and animals as well as megaliths (9,500–8,000 BC). This succeeds an earlier period of development in the Levant, as in the Hayonim Cave, were carvings of animals such as horses are known from the earliest dates of the Upper Paleolithic, with dates ranging from 40,000 to 18,500 BP."Horse from Hayonim Cave, Israel, 30,000 years" in
In Prehistoric and Ancient Mesopotamia, the climate was cooler than in Egypt or the Indus Valley, meaning that the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were very different from the deserts of today; in the highlands there were bands of forest interspersed with steppes and savannas rich in flora and abounding with goats, boars, deer, and fox. After the invention of agriculture, farmers worked in the valley, but the community lived in the more easily fortifiable hills. Unlike in China and the Indus Valley civilization, the villages had two economic orientations, downhill to the fields of grain and uphill into the mountains of Anatolia with their rich mines of gold and copper. Mesopotamian cultures were thus continually in a state of flux, which had its own advantages and difficulties.
Art of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (circa 9000–7000 BC) Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
Following the Epipalaeolithic period in the Near East, several Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites are known from the areas of Upper Mesopotamia and the northern mountainous fringes of Mesopotamia, marked by the appearance around 9000 BC on the banks of the Upper Euphrates of the world's oldest known megaliths at Göbekli Tepe, and the first known use of agriculture around the same time at Tell Abu Hureyra, a site from the preceding Natufian culture.
Numerous realistic reliefs and a few sculptures of animals, as well as fragments of reliefs of humans or deities, are known from Göbekli Tepe and dated to circa 9000 BC. The Urfa Man found in another site nearby is dated to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic circa 9000 BC, and is considered as "the oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human". Slightly later, early human statuettes in stone and fired clay have been found in other Upper Mesopotamia sites such as Mureybet, dated to 8500–8000 BC.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Around 8000 BC, during the following period of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, still before the invention of pottery, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as alabaster or granite, and employing sand to shape and polish. Artisans used the veins in the material to maximum visual effect. Such object have been found in abundance on the upper Euphrates river, in what is today eastern Syria, especially at the site of Bouqras.
In northeastern Mesopotamia, the Jarmo culture (7500 BC), centered on the site of Jarmo (Qal'at Jarmo) is a prehistoric archeological site located in modern Iraq on the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. Excavations revealed that Jarmo was an agricultural community, dating back to 7500 BC, based on irrigation through natural rainfall. It preceded the human expansion towards the alluvial plains of central Mesopotamia. It was broadly contemporary with such other important Neolithic sites such as Jericho in the southern Levant, Çatalhöyük in Anatolia or Tell Sabi Abyad in northern Syria. Some fragments of stone vessels and alabaster jars have also been found in Jarmo, dating to circa 7500 BC, before the c.7000 BC invention of pottery.
First experiments with pottery (circa 7000 BC)
The northern Mesopotamian sites of Tell Hassuna and Jarmo are some of the oldest sites in the Near-East where pottery has been found, appearing in the most recent levels of excavation, which dates it to the 7th millennium BC. This pottery is handmade, of simple design and with thick sides, and treated with a vegetable solvent.For Jarmo pottery photograph, see There are clay figures, zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, including figures of pregnant women which are taken to be fertility goddesses, similar to the Mother Goddess of later Neolithic cultures in the same region.
Halaf culture (6000–5000 BC, Northwestern Mesopotamia)
Pottery was decorated with abstract geometric patterns and ornaments, especially in the Halaf culture, also known for its clay fertility figurines, painted with lines. Clay was all around and the main material; often modelled figures were painted with black decoration. Carefully crafted and dyed pots, especially jugs and bowls, were traded. As dyes, iron oxide containing clays were diluted in different degrees or various minerals were mixed to produce different colours.
The Halaf culture saw the earliest known appearance of stamp seals. They featured essentially geometric patterns.
Female fertility figurines in painted clay, possibly goddesses, also appear in this period, circa 6000–5100 BC.
Hassuna culture (6000–5000 BC, Northern Mesopotamia)
The Hassuna culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture in northern Mesopotamia dating to the early sixth millennium BC. It is named after the type site of Tell Hassuna in Iraq. Other sites where Hassuna material has been found include Tell Shemshara. The decoration of pottery essentially consists in geometrical shapes, and a few ibex designs.
Samarra culture (6000–4800 BC, Central Mesopotamia)
The Samarra culture is a Chalcolithic archaeological culture in northern Mesopotamia that is roughly dated to 5500–4800 BCE. It partially overlaps with the Hassuna and early Ubaid.
Ubaid culture (c. 6500–3800 BC, Southern Mesopotamia)
The Ubaid period (c. 6500–3800 BC)Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, Number 63) The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (2010) p. 2; "Radiometric data suggest that the whole Southern Mesopotamian Ubaid period, including Ubaid 0 and 5, is of immense duration, spanning nearly three millennia from about 6500 to 3800 B.C." is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives from Tell al-'Ubaid in Southern Mesopotamia, where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted initially by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Woolley.Hall, Henry R. and Woolley, C. Leonard. 1927. Al-'Ubaid. Ur Excavations 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain although it is likely earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium.Adams, Robert MCC. and Wright, Henry T. 1989. 'Concluding Remarks' in Henrickson, Elizabeth and Thuesen, Ingolf (eds.) Upon This Foundation - The ’Ubaid Reconsidered. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 451–456. In the south it has a very long duration between about 6500 and 3800 BC when it is replaced by the Uruk period.Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham. 2010. 'Deconstructing the Ubaid' in Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham (eds.) Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. p. 2.
In North Mesopotamia, Ubaid culture expanded during the period between about 5300 and 4300 BC. It is preceded by the Halaf period and the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period and succeeded by the Late Chalcolithic period. The new period is named Northern Ubaid to distinguish it from the proper Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia.
With Ubaid 3 (circa 4500 BC) numerous examples of Ubaid pottery have been found along the Persian Gulf, as far as Dilmun, where Indus Valley civilization pottery has also been found.
Stamps seals start to depict animals in stylistic fashion, and also bear the first known depiction of the Master of Animals at the end of the period, circa 4000 BC.
Historic Mesopotamia Sumerian period (c. 4000–2334 BC)
The rise of the non-Semitic-speaking Sumerian culture spans a period of about two millennia, and saw the development of sophisticated artistic traditions, as well as the invention of writing, first through pictographic signs, and then through cuneiforms.
Pre-Dynastic period: Uruk (c. 4000 to 3100 BC)
The Protoliterate or Uruk period, named after the city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period, following the Ubaid period and succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period generally dated to 3100–2900 BC. It saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia, and the beginnings of Sumerian civilization, and also the first "great creative age" of Mesopotamian art.Frankfort, 27 Slightly earlier, the northern city of Tell Brak, today in Syria, also saw urbanization, and the development of a temple with regional significance. This is called the Eye Temple after the many "eye idols", in fact votive offerings, found there, a type distinctive to this site. The stone Tell Brak Head, 7 inches high, shows a simplified face; similar heads are in gypsum. These were evidently fitted to bodies that have not survived, probably of wood.Frankfort, 241-242 Like temples further south, the Eye Temple was decorated with cone mosaics made up of clay cylinders some four inches long, differently coloured to create simple patterns.Frankfort, 24, 242