2. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia and South Arabia

2. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia and South Arabia

Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern-day Iraq flourished a series of powerful cultures whose advancements and ideas have resonated throughout human history. These are the kingdoms of Mesopotamia, which means the land between two rivers, comprising between the fourth and first millenia Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria. These were city-states which saw themselves in subjugation to non-human divinities from above, the Annunaki gods and goddesses and their half-breed line of priest-kings, and who built temples and mustered up a high degree of civil organization including irrigation projects, coordinated harvests and distribution, as well as elaborate systems of tribute and taxes. Their distinction comes not only from this high level of society-engineering, but also from the fact that they were meticulous record-keepers. We have transaction receipts from the mid-fourth millennium B.C.E., at first written in pictographs, which relied on crude pictures for concepts, before the appearance of cuneiform, the first true system of writing which impressed triangular wedge-marks made with a stylus in to a clay tablets, which were baked to impart durability to their content. However, in this lecture we will also look at the proto-historical kingdom of Saba, or Biblical Sheba, as well as Qataban, Hadhramawt, Ma’in, and others which flourished in the land of modern-day Yemen, whose archaeology and art history show a marked Mesopotamian influence as well as unique distinctions. The South Arabian civilizations usually get left off most maps of the ancient world, so this lecture will give a glimpse into what is otherwise a severely neglected area of art history. We will look at the time period from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to about the seventh century B.C.E. for the Mesopotamian and Arabian kingdoms.

The rise of the Sumerian city-state in the fourth millennium B.C.E. brought new standards of building and art production to Mesopotamia and further afield through wide-spread trade networks. However Sumerian cuneiform tablets have bequeathed a wealth of insight into Mesopotamian mythology and social organization and are the oldest known human writings. The Epic of Gilgamesh, found on tablets which predate Homer’s Iliad by 1,500 years, is about a king of Uruk of the same name who lived in the third millennium B.C.E. That time frame coincides with the construction and use of the monumental White Temple at Uruk. Although today its mud-brick construction has eroded down, five thousand years ago, it would have been a towering structure, built tall in order to facilitate communication between the priest and the god who was believed to descend from the sky. The cella, or central hall, was the receiving room for these divine visits and possessed an altar and statuary which we shall turn to shortly. This innermost sanctum was only reached after a winding route which made right turns, perhaps in order for processions to be visible from all sides of the temple: this twisting schematic formed the distinctive bent axis plan of the structure.

Compare the Sumerian White Temple at Uruk with the Neo-Sumerian Ziggurat at Ur constructed a millennium later. This feat of engineering followed on the heels of political upheaval in the intervening centuries: the Sumerians had been assimilated by the powerful ruler Sargon of Akkad to their north. The Akkadians had a different language and a different governing mentality, but they bent Sumerian cuneiform to accommodate their tongue and imposed their regime as god-kings on their neighbors to the south. Invaders from the mountains brought an end to Akkadian rule, but a resurgence led to the repulsion of the invaders and the re-establishment of a vigorous Neo-Sumerian civilization. This is the context for the construction of such a triumphant and imposing monument as the Ur Ziggurat. But what is meant by the term ziggurat? The four-sided tiered platforms facing the cardinal directions became a central idea in Mesopotamian ceremonial architecture, and some see its characteristic levels as the ancestors of the step-pyramid. With the later ziggurat, the bent axis plan has been abandoned in favor of a central axis plan, a straight-line approach to the highest and holiest altar.

In the earliest Sumerian temples, we also see innovation in the function of anthropomorphic statuary. Unlike the fertility or ancestor cults of the Bronze Age and Neolithic civilizations, we are told exactly the purpose and the identity of the praying statues with large hypnotic eyes: they are votive figures, religious stand-ins which double as the patron, whose presence at the altar acts as intercessors between the gods and the men and women they represent. They adopt an attitude of prayer and supplication, tiny hands folded, wide-eyed and silent in rapt devotion. Out of ancient Sumer apparently came the idea that an artwork, usually but not always in statue form, could function as a substitute of the living person’s presence in a holy space, and it is one which would remain relevant in human religion well through the modern era, as votive images are still popular expressions of devotion in some religions. The particular attention given to the eyes reflects the magical significance of the eyes of these “living” statues; cuneiform tablets have also revealed Mesopotamian rituals of “Mouth-Washing” and “Eye-Opening” which were performed as in the final stages of creating not only a piece of sculpture, but a ritual object invested with the life by the priestly artist-slash-magician.

Turning to the statuettes of South Arabia, we looked last time at some northern Neolithic examples of anthropomorphic statues in line with other statues in Jordan. Objects in line with this type have also been found in the south, from the ancient kingdoms of Qataban and Hadhramawt in particular. These early statues of men and women carved from rocks are generally thought to be ancestor-images or the material culture from an early fertility cult. These two examples from Bronze Age Yemen probably fall into the latter category. On the right, you see a sandstone female figure in the “Venus” type we looked at last time, with what appears to be an incised pudenda, ample midsection, and arms folded across her waist. However, notice that her hands are not touching. On the right is an extremely rare example of a male counterpart to the more common female icon. The shape of the rock, its central cut suggestive of the glans of male anatomy, is made to serve as the outline of the anthropomorphic figure which takes up the rest of the rock. These sandstone anthropomorphic carvings tend to have sparing, highly stylized renditions of facial and clothing features; this tendency to abstraction and geometric minimalism will be an ongoing distinguishing characteristic of the art of South Arabia. These are the oldest known type of anthropomorphic statuary which are classed as “idols.” His arms folded over his front torso, hands not touching, also conforms to the established standard of representation. You would be hard-pressed to find an ancient Yemeni rock-cut statuette that did not have its arms like this. It has also been observed that these early statues followed a canon of proportions, or the measured division of the human body; in the case of the Yemeni Bronze-Age statuettes, the lower part of the body always takes up about a third of the whole. They are for all appearances indigenous expressions more closely in line with the Stone and Bronze Age art we looked at last time; recent excavations have even determined that they were coated and colored with red ochre, as with the cave murals of Neolithic France and the Himba tribe of present-day Namibia. Another type which belongs to the earliest art history of South Arabia is the kind known as the “Forefathers.” They are depicted seated, rising from a square-cut column of rock. The stele or plinth-type also conformed to a strict canon of proportions, and the arms stretch out in front (never meeting in the center).

Representations of gods and goddesses whose function was to contain or otherwise be made to channel the divinity itself are called cult statues and often idols. They were objects of worship and veneration, and they were often dressed in the finest silks, gold jewelry, and other marks of honor. We see a Yemeni goddess figure, thought to be perhaps Shams their female sun-god, an anomaly which speaks to the distinctiveness of their culture, as virtually all of the sun gods of their ancient neighbors were invariably male. The identity of the human figure seated on a throne in ancient South Arabian sculpture was that of a mother goddess, ruler, and the power of nature. Compare then with the even older goddess from the Inanna temple complex of Uruk in ancient Sumer. The features are more refined than the votive statues, and the material is more precious; however, the concept of its execution is similar. This mask-type face would have had inlaid eyes and perhaps a golden hair style.

In the arc of South Arabian history, the ancient and indigenous lithic sculpture style soon would become supplanted by a new kind of artistic and cultural traditions with direct ties to Mesopotamian culture. On some of the most ancient statues, we sometimes find later inscriptions that dedicate them post-facto as votives, effectively changing the identity from object of worship itself to a dedicated intermediary. So, when we see this style of votive statuettes with inlaid eyes start to appear in South Arabia, we can infer a strong Sumerian influence among the art and ritual culture of South Arabia. Yet they retained a distinct regional style; one observation has been that the relationship between the length of the torso and the legs in Mesopotamian figures is the exact opposite in their South Arabian counterparts. Other stylistic differences present themselves: the diamond-shaped or rhomboid eyes of late Qatabanian and early Sabaean art give them nevertheless the same hypnotizing stare of the Tell Asmar votives from Iraq; the use of blue lapis lazuli for the irises is common to both traditions. In some cases, we see the new Sumerian-derived style superimposed on the more ancient plinth-shape, as with the votive image on the far right.

The most monumental of votives were left by rulers, priests, and royals of both sexes; the votive sculpture of the Neo-Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash from the late third millennium B.C.E. commemorate his founding of numerous temples, his personal religious piety, his direct commission of the statue, and an individualized appearance of this historical Mesopotamian ruler. As an ensi, or priestly ruler, he claimed descent from the gods who descended to Earth, and this is the theological justification for his representation in a pose otherwise reserved for the Annunaki gods and goddesses. Furthermore, we have the cuneiform inscription of Gudea’s perception of the act of dedicating a statue, “Gudea, the builder of the temple, has given me life.” This is not figurative poetry: here we underline again the elaborate rituals which the ancient Mesopotamians employed to consecrate their statues, both votive and cult; gods and now, with Gudea, human kings. Gudea’s view of himself though is striking for its humility; in another inscription, he calls himself merely the shepherd loved by his king (the god Ningirsu). Yet Gudea’s seemingly comfortable reign and placid depiction as votary, with the clasped-hands typical of the older Sumerian style, came on the heels of a more turbulent era of creating portraits of kings in the mode of divine cult statues themselves. The rise and fall of powerful rulers and kingdoms in Mesopotamia unfolded on an epic scale and produced the earliest commemorative portrait sculpture of those rulers, whose historical records allow us to not only know their names, but a great deal of detail about their society and religion. Sargon the Great of Akkad, who conquered Sumer in the third millennium B.C.E. among other sweeping military conquests, ushered in an entire style we distinguish as Akkadian, rather than Sumerian, for its celebration of the ruler as ruler by divine descent in the modes of the cult statues which were objects of worship in the temples. The copper head of the Akkadian ruler, perhaps Sargon the Great, is rendered in such exquisitely natural detail, with virtuosic treatment of the texture of his beard and woven plaits of his head-covering or hair, as to put it on par with the exquisiteness of treatment given to the alabaster Inanna, for example, from the earlier period. Indeed, the era of Akkadian rule which Sargon established in third-millenium B.C. Mesopotamia was absolute and god-like during his lifetime, and his daughter the high priestess Enheduanna is the first author in human history whose name is known. She is also the historic individual represented at the center of an alabaster votive disk excavated at Ur, where she was the priestess of the temple to Nanna, the male god of the moon and chief deity of the city. Here we don’t see the full face of the surface covered, as with the extremely ancient treatment of natural surfaces. Rather, a register, a single band like a comic-strip, is employed, which had by then been a standard feature of Sumerian pictorial tradition.

Further back still in Sumerian Girsu (where Gudea would build his temples about five hundred years later), a carved stone stele commemorates the victory of Eannatum, an earlier ensi of Lagash. The Stele of the Vultures, which gets its name from a scene depicting these carrion birds making off with the heads of fallen soldiers, is arranged into regular rows or registers, where narrative scenes unfold and communicate through pictures and cuneiform inscriptions the historical details of their battle with the neighboring city-state Umma. We see old conventions still in exclusive use: the composite of frontal views for some body parts and profile for others. The eye is seen front-on even when the head is turned (and it is never not turned). We see as well a sophisticated deployment of overlapping elements and the use of only token bodyparts, for example the hand holding a spear, or the helmeted head in profile, to communicate a large group of humans. The Stele of the Vultures is also where we learn that the ensi of Lagash claim descent through, essentially, artificial insemination of the Annunaki god Enlil’s semen in his mother, with the assistance of the city-state’s god Ningirsu; for this reason, the text also records that Eannatum was taller in stature than other humans, which is problematic for the modern art historian’s concept of a hierarchy of scale if the artist were depicting a ruler who was truly larger than the general population.

The excavation of the Royal Cemetery of Ur unearthed a bonanza of musical instruments crafted with exquisite care and expense; these were perhaps buried with them to provide music for the Sumerian royals and aristocrats all through the afterlife. These high-quality Sumerian decorative arts also demonstrate how predominant the innovation of organizing narrative scenes into sequential registers became in two-dimensional artworks. The so-called Standard of Ur, a wooden box inlaid with shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, is not the war banner it was initially thought to be, but a sound box for another musical instrument, featuring the same convention of scenes organized in registers and executed with natural materials cut and fitted into an inlay in the wood. In one panel of the Bull Headed Harp, or Lyre, we see truly captivating images which blend human and animal natures indiscriminately. On the top panel, we see a man, perhaps a hero along the lines of Gilgamesh, supporting two human-faced bulls. Beneath, a dog and a lion seem to go about some rather anthropomorphized domestic scene; they are standing on their hind legs like humans, the lion is carrying a jar by its handle and perhaps an offering bowl, and the dog, with a dagger tucked into its belt in the tribal fashion, looks to be carrying a table heaped with a pig’s head and leg as well as a severed goat’s head. A cow and a bear appear to be keeping company with a small animal sipping from a cup next to a garlanded bull. On the lowest register, a scorpion-man faces away with a scroll perhaps in his hand while a goat stands ready with two cups offered. What is going on? Sumerian epic provides some literary possibilities of interpretation, for example, a scorpion-king menaces Gilgamesh in the epic tale, and perhaps the cuneiform tablet with the story behind these images will surface one day.

Many other scenes were unrolled, literally, into clay tablets which have been the objects of intense study.  These cylinder seals functioned as markers, literally, of elite rank, to authenticate documents which passed under the review; rulers, priests, and administrators would have their name and title in cuneiform as well as, in some cases, narrative scenes. These were limited in length by the finite nature of the tube of stone, ivory, or other hard material used for the carved seal. Nevertheless, these cylinder seals by their very nature underline the distinct Mesopotamian innovation in the visual arts of confining depicted figures to a register, usually single though sometimes multiple, on a uniform ground line. In other words, we no longer have images of animals and humans floating weightless in the space of the rock face or Neolithic wall. Many Sumerian examples reveal a scene of worship or administration, very often the two overlapped in ancient Mesopotamia. In some later examples, you will find a central divinity flanked by two attributes in a heraldic composition, that is a symmetrical arrangement of elements.

Sometimes, the transgression of the strict Sumerian convention of depicting scenes in clearly-defined registers was in itself a statement of awesome power. With the Akkadian era, which we remember was marked by a new concept of the king as living god, we see the Victory Stele of Naram-Sin from Sippar, Iraq. For the first time we see the figures placed in a natural landscape, in this case a rocky mountain outcrop. Beneath him, in loose diagonal registers corresponding to descending slopes on that mountain are seen the much smaller figures of his army and their defeated foes. We remember the hierarchy of scale which we have seen as early as the Neolithic King petroglyph of Saudi Arabia, but we also recall that the early Mesopotamian god-kings, like Sargon the Great or the later Neo-Sumerian ensis, were maintained to be physically larger than normal human beings. Whether or not this bore out as truth in historical reality is up for debate, but this was absolutely followed faithfully by the artists who carved commemorative stelae and other images of royalty.

In the later era of Mesopotamian history, after the fall of Sumer, Akkad, and Neo-Sumer, rose the kingdom of Babylon under the rule of Hammurabi. The stele setting down Hammurabi’s Code is the first known code of law. It is from ancient Babylonian law where we get such models of punishment as, “an eye for an eye.” The stele itself which was originally set up in a public space in Babylon has the code in cuneiform writing under a dedicatory image above. We see the sun-god Shamash, a male figure in Mesopotamian mythology as opposed to the female South Arabian sun-goddess Shems we looked at a short while ago, seated on a throne that for the first time gives us a hint of depth. In other words, the artist has created the illusion on a two-dimensional surface that the throne is a three-dimensional space. We see the standard composite positioning of the body, a front-on torso, with the legs and head in profile, but we see a new perspective of a common motif. We recall seeing bulls’ horns usually from the front perspective in older art, but the folds of his crown have been identified as a stack of four bulls’ horns seen in profile.

In spite of Babylon’s high level of social organization and legal accountability of its citizens, this kingdom too was doomed to be conquered by invading people. Both the Hammurabi Stele and the Victory Stele of Naram-Sin were looted and brought to Susa, Iran by the Elamites A short time later, the Assyrian kingdom rose to power, and Sargon II and later his son Sennacherib were its notoriously merciless rulers. The Assyrian royal palace and citadel at Dur Sharrukin in modern-day Iraq was guarded by the formidable Lamassu sculptures, the man-headed winged bulls at the gates. These are relief sculpture, though the front presents the appearance of sculpture in the round. From the side, the Lamassu’s bull-legs are in motion, but from the front, they are fixed on the ground. We also can see a double row of bull-horns on its ceremonial headdress.

The earliest city-state and priestly-kingdoms that emerge in Yemen’s antiquity rose to wealth and power by their monopoly over the incense trade route, a necessary component of religious ritual throughout ancient Mesopotamia, the Near East, and the Mediterranean. Incense only grew in the Hadhramawt region, which is mentioned in the Old Testament’s Genesis chapter as Hazarmaveth, and farther afield in Dhofar, modern Oman, but at this early phase of history, maritime navigation had not been perfected, and the only way that the outside world received their supplies of frankincense was by the long overland route up the Arabian Peninsula by camel caravan. Kingdoms along the route grew wealthy by taxing the shipments coming through, and if they deviated from the established road, the punishment was death. The inland kingdom of Qataban, which was one of the stops on the overland incense route and one of the wealthy city-states we call the Old Caravan Kingdoms, furnish us with some of the earliest examples of Mesopotamian-style votive statuary.

Sargon and his son Sennacherib of the early eighth- and late-seventh centuries B.C.E. are points of documented, formal relations with their ruling counterparts in South Arabia. In their voluminous record-keeping tablets, we find mention of two Sabaean rulers, Ita’amar, or Yatha’amar in Sabaean writing, and his son Karib’il Watar, or Karibilu from the cuneiform. These mentions document the rise to power and the unification of diverse farming and pastoral tribes into communities and city-states ruled by a mukarrib, a distinctive title used by the earliest rulers of ancient Saba, Sheba in the Bible. Like the concept of kingship seen with the Akkadians and the use of ensi as a title by the later Neo-Sumerians, the Sabaean mukarribs were larger-than-life absolute rulers, epic conquerors, extraordinary civil engineers, and claimed a mixed descent from the gods of the sky. Both Assyrian and Sabaean rulers were zealous about leaving commemorative inscriptions and markers to their achievement. By this time in South Arabia, a distinct written language had appeared: it is not a derivative of the written root-language that led to early Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic, but links have been found to the Phoenician language. We find South Arabian inscriptions in stone, wood, drawn on pottery, and cast in bronze. The list of achievements of Sargon II and Karib’il Water, also called Karib’il the Great in the manner of Sargon of Akkad, mirror each other extremely closely: in creating their empires, they both united and subjugated older confederations of tribes, massacred and burned pre-existing city-states, and built massive walls around their conquests.

The mukarrib rulers of ancient Saba, in the style of ancient conquerors everywhere, enslaved the populations of the cities it circled in walls and put this work-force to the task of erecting monumental stone temples, palaces, and fortifications. The mukarrib Yada’il Dharih built the temple to the moon god Almaqah at Sirwah sometime around the seventh century B.C.E. We found the following inscription at Sirwah: “This has been acquired by Karib’il Watar … mukarrib of Saba, … on behalf of Almaqah and Saba.” We see strong fortification walls around a circular temple complex with a row of tall pillars at its entrance. The construction quality of the walls show a highly sophisticated level of lithic engineering. Unfortunately, this site was targeted recently by a Saudi bombardment in the ongoing war.

For all the fame and splendor of Sirwah, Marib however became the first capital of growing Sabaean empire, and ultimately, its showcase of engineering and temple construction. The Temple of Awwam in Marib dates to this early Sabaean period of the mukarribs, and we remember that Karib’il the Great celebrated his building of new temple walls. This site was buried in the desert for thousands of years, and only recently are we able to appreciate the highly sophisticated lithic construction techniques employed here and at other Sabaean sites. The fortifications of Karib’il are indeed extensive, and surround a temple entrance marked originally by six tall columns. Medieval Arabic historians remarked that the columns of Saba were made extraordinarily strong by pouring molten metal into their bases, but archaeological evidence so far has not confirmed this.

For all the splendor of the temples, palaces, and fortifications at Marib and elsewhere in the Sabaean kingdom, which stretched at its furthest under Karib’il Watar across the Red Sea into parts of East Africa, the singular accomplishment of the Sabaean civilization was its command of large-scale hydraulic engineering works. These dams and canals were critical in managing water flows in a region which increasingly came only as seasonal floods. We can see to a much smaller extent from satellite pictures how the modern Marib Dam, donated in the ‘80s, brings green to this corner of the “Empty Quarter” of the Arabian Desert. During the time of the Sabaeans, it was famous for its lush, fertile, and vigorously cultivated land. This all was due to the planning and execution of a sophisticated network of collection dams, reservoirs, and wells, and none were more emblematic of the glory of South Arabia in antiquity than the Marib Dam. Unfortunately, this wonder of the ancient world was also a recent target for a Saudi bombardment in 2015 and has sustained major damage. It originally covered about 700 meters, incorporating stone slabs as well as a cement-like mixture, and two intricate sluices were on either end; the purpose of the dam was to stop the flood-waters and force it through the sluices and onward into an intricate irrigation system. The changing nature of the Sabaean ruler, from a god-like conqueror in the stamp of a Sargon, for example, to the chief administrator of a vast bureaucracy and civil planning, is reflected in the shift from the title mukarrib to the new malik, or king. Karib’il the Great is considered both the last mukarrib and the first malik. Although some dam and irrigation system existed at Marib as early as the eighteenth century B.C., but the monumental construction of the seventh century established its basic form, maintenance and repairs notwithstanding.

Other aspects of the conquests of Karib’il the Great documented in another Sirwah explain the demise of older forms of “gods,” the anthropomorphic idol statues we looked at earlier and the cause for the appearance of a later Sabaean votive-type. Describing an assault upon a rival king of Nashan, the inscription reads, “he imposed a tax on Nashan [regarding the priests], forbade Nashan to renege on his promise that his citizens would turn to the gods [or else] they would be massacred,…” The list goes on, but the imposition of a new practice of religious worship on pain of death is clear. One of the neighboring kingdoms of South Arabia which fell under Karib’il the Great was Awsan, and the votive statues of two Awsanite kings accordingly belong to the older style of votive we looked at earlier. Between the two figures we can see a world of difference in the surface treatment and representation of naturalistic detail. On the left is a far simpler human form, with simple lines marking the edge of the robe. On the right, we see diagonal lines and carving which creates a relief effect and variation of depth. The difference between these two statuettes is keeping pace with the Assyrian refinements in the visual arts, particularly the use of multiple repeating lines, often diagonal in order to create the illusion of depth, and a far sharper eye for details in hair and clothing textures. The facial features have also become more delicate and towards the naturalism of a portrait, rather than the more cultic minimalism of the probably earlier king’s statue on the left. We find the employment of the repeating-line conventions witnessed in the second-millennium B.C. stele of Hammurabi, where the diagonal lines of both his beard, headdress, and robe were deployed to achieve the illusion of depth. We recall as well the effort to render his throne in a way that suggests its three-dimensionality receding into pictorial space. Also, in the lists of Babylonian kings of Hammurabi’s dynasty, we find many South Arabian names, underscoring the direct connection between these two ancient empires. The Medieval Arabic historian Maqrizi wrote that the sons of Qahtan (Joktan in the Bible) split, with one ruling Babylon and the other the Hadhramawt. Another tradition from Oman sees that region as the refuge of ancient Mesopotamians escaping from the Great Flood.

We recall the kingdom of Nashan, utterly destroyed by Karib’il the Great in the seventh century B.C. as his victory inscription records, and in its ruins, we see further evidence of the transmission of very early Mesopotamian artistic conventions to South Arabia. The presence of forms which appear in the proto-dynastic period of Sumer as early as the fourth millennium B.C. underscore an early date for the archaic city-state kingdoms which preceded the rise of the Sabaean empire. The decorative carvings on the portal of the temple of Athtar in Nashan are completely covered by stylized designs organized into horizontal registers. This is a truly archaic style of art in South Arabia, as it seems that the temple was built using recycled decorative panels from an even older, unknown site. We see highly stylized, geometric profile-views of rams, ibex, and snakes, as well as a female figure holding a horn. The dense and intricate treatment of decorative elements around the doorway has been offered as a way of adorning the temple in a convention called the “Brocade Style.” As we have seen in proto-dynastic Sumerian examples, all the available space is filled; in art, we speak of an horror vacui, a fear of emptiness, informing this decorative compulsion. Textile artwork does not survive from this time period, but we may reasonably surmise that their weaving incorporated similar treatments of human and animal forms in addition to abstract, repeating linear patterns. Modern-day inhabitants of Sawda, close to Nashan’s ruins, call the long female figures on the temple Banat ‘Ad, or the daughters of Ad, an ancient race of giants which features in many cultures’ early traditions and mythologies.

Farther north, from the kingdom of Ma’in, we find an undated stone slab with figurative engravings in an identical style to those we saw on the Standard of Ur. This is the only known narrative scene to emerge from such an archaic date. However, unlike the Ur images, the registers which the surrounding smaller figures figure into are much looser, and there is no common ground line. As with earlier kinds of paintings, we still have the “floating in space” effect for this group of figures. The bigger size of the central figure likely indicates his importance. The Sumerian name “Magan” given to what was thought to be the Persian Gulf was put forward as a reference to the Ma’in Kingdom of South Arabia long before this slab was discovered and supports this connection. We also find that the first known king of the Hadhramawt was a relative of the Ma’in, further underlining the connection with ancient Sumer and the later Babylonian dynasty of Mesopotamia.

Finally, we consider a fantastic beast that is usually familiar to us only in Mesopotamian culture: the man-headed winged lion we call the Lamassu. This chimeric form is seen in a carved stone from the Istanbul Museum’s Pre-Islamic Arabian collection; no provenance or date have been conclusively assigned, but knowing what we do about the transmission of forms to the ancient Caravan Kingdoms of Arabia, this piece most probably belongs to the same time period and phenomenon.

We have looked at the rise of many civilizations which emerged from the previous era’s confederations of pastoral and agricultural settlements, both in Mesopotamia as well as South Arabia. We have seen strong connections emerge between these two distant lands which each produced some of the earliest true economic and political super-powers of the ancient world. At the same time, art developed into new styles associated with these god-like rulers which can be seen throughout their many construction works, both public and private. The well-researched visual and written culture of ancient Mesopotamia has led to some insight about the less-studied Arabian Caravan kingdoms, who were no less powerful, wealthy, or territorially ambitious.

 

Bibliography

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Phillips, Wendell. Qataban and Sheba: Exploring the Ancient Kingdoms on the Biblical Spice Routes of Arabia. 1955.

Stark, Freya. The Southern Gates of Arabia. 1936.