Rethinking approaches to the art of the Ancient Near East until c. 600 B.C.E.
Rethinking approaches to the art of the Ancient Near East until c. 600 B.C.E.
by DR. SENTA GERMAN
Enormous cities. Writing. Massive temples that stretched upwards to the sky. Long-distance trade. Developments that characterize the earliest states and empires of the Ancient Near East still enthrall us today. The art and architecture of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Akkadians (from what is known as Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), as well as Assyrian cultures from the 6th to the 1st millennium B.C.E. are often the focus, but these were inextricably tied to the greater region, including that of the ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Hittites, Mitanni, and Persians (also called the Achaemenids).
All of this is called the Ancient Near East, so called “near” because it is nearer to Europe (“the West“) than East and Southeast Asia, such as China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This label is, plainly, Eurocentric, and dates to the 18th century and the European categorization and organization of the rich eastern trade lands. We might ask whether we should still use the term “Near East,” given how embedded it is in the colonial past—when European countries, such as England, France, Belgium, and Germany held huge swaths of land on the continents of Asia and Africa in order to systematically and violently extract valuable raw materials and labor, the fruits of which flowed back to colonial owners and nations while leaving colonized lands poor and politically volatile.
If you take any introductory course on art history, the art of the Ancient Near East will often be taught at the beginning and comprise several modules. It has become an important part of the art-historical canon for many reasons, including:
The Ancient Near East is a part of the world where we find all the hallmarks of civilization—a collection of circumstances and practices, typically defined by urban living, craft specialization, a spectrum of wealth, from rich to poor, some form of government and laws or social organization, a written language, and monumental architecture.
The art of the Ancient Near East illustrates some of the earliest, grandest, and most sweeping military conquests in world history.
The history of the Ancient Near East is inextricably linked to to the stories and characters of the Bible, as well as their visual representation. Many of these stories have been a near constant subject matter of historians and art historians since the 19th century.
Many Europeans have linked their cultural heritage to the history of the Ancient Near East for centuries.
Alongside these reasons one might add that we study the art and architecture of the Ancient Near East because it is spectacularly beautiful, astonishingly sophisticated (especially for such an early era), and at the same time emotional and human. However, a lot of what we say about Ancient Near Eastern art is rooted in outdated ideas or perspectives that need to be rethought and replaced wit