Art and Culture - 02 - Bronze Age Overview

Lecture 2
THE
BRONZE
AGE -
OVERVIEW
AESTHETIC
EXPERIENCE
AND
IDEAS

Civilization emerged independently in at
least four different locations centered
around major river valleys.

In modern scholarship, Mesopotamia refers
to the geographical area located in the
region of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers,
roughly equivalent to present-day Iraq.

There never was a country or state called
Mesopotamia.
Rather it refers to a geographical area and the
various people that lived there (Sumerians,
Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, etc).

Archeological evidence indicates that
agriculture and the elements of
civilization (cities, monumental
architecture, writing) were combined for
the first time in the Mesopotamia area
around 3500 – 3100 BCE.
Villages, small agriculture
First cities, large irrigation agriculture

1. Relative Dating
2. Scientific Dating

Geographical Context
The southern region of Mesopotamia,
particularly the land of Sumer, was a flat
and treeless expanse of river-watered land
ideal for irrigation agriculture, surrounded
by deserts.

Climate Change
Climate and coastline in Mesopotamia area
changed considerably during the millennia
leading up to the development of cities.

The sudden (about 8400 BCE), then slow,
draining of cold Glacial Lake Agassiz,
raised global sea levels relatively
suddenly and transformed global
temperature patterns.

The sea level raise also transformed
the fresh water Black Sea Lake into
the salt water Black Sea.
Some scholars claim the flooding of
this area prompted the spread of
wheat-based agriculture into the
Mesopotamian area.

T C Turney, C.S.M. and Brown, H. (2007) "Catastrophic early Holocene sea level
rise, human migration and the Neolithic transition in Europe." Quaternary
Science Reviews, 26, 2036–2041.

In a good year Mesopotamian farmers
could produce abundant crops with plenty
of food left over.
However, the region lacked many of the
natural resources essential for continued
development, and this paucity of natural
resources was one of the major factors
behind the unique development of the
Mesopotamian cities.
Because the inhabitants were forced to
trade their agricultural surpluses for
much-needed natural resources, they
became traders and merchants who
opened up and maintained trade routes
with their resource-rich neighbours as far
away as Egypt, India, and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the most important trade activity
revolved around the new high technology
of the day: bronze.

Bronze making was a transformative
technology. Not only could it make
weapons that stayed sharp, it was
amazingly versatile. It could be cast into a
wide range of shapes and sizes.
Bronze is made from 10 parts copper to
one part tin.
As a general rule, where you find copper
you don’’t find tin. Thus, the only way to
have access to the key technology of that
age was through trade.

Scientists can actually trace where the tin
came from in these ancient bronze
artifacts. Some tin came from what is
now Turkey, Afghanistan, Spain, and even
England.

Thus, throughout the so-called Bronze Age
(approx 3300 BCE- 1100 BCE), trade and
commerce (and interaction with foreign
peoples) were essential.

In the ancient city of Kanesh, we have written records of a community
of traders and merchants from Assur, a 19-day journey by mule (no
horses yet). This community of traders brought in tin and textiles from
Afghanistan and Egypt, and received silver and gold which they
shipped back to Assur.

We know an enormous amount about these traders because we have
f found 1000s and 1000s of their written letters (most dealing with
money matters). But not all of them.
Some are from their women as well, and talk of concerns that sound pretty similar to our
own. One of the best of these is written by a lady called Lamasie who writes to her
husband:
“When you left you did not leave me any silver, not even one crooked shekle. And yet you
write to me complaining about _my_ extravagance. We have no money to buy food and
yet you think I am extravagant? I sent all my money to you and right now I am living in an
empty house. Send me the money you make for the textiles which I made without delay. …
Since you left our neighbor has made a house that is twice as large as ours. When will we
be able to do the same?”

Sumerian City States
The city-state was the system of political
organization used in the southern part of the
Tigris– Euphrates river valley during much of the
third millennium BC .
The city-state originated around 3500 BC, and
consisted of an urban centre with as many as
50000 inhabitants, which served as the
administrative, economic, and cultural core for
the surrounding region.
These city states are often referred to
collectively as Sumer and their people as
Sumerians.

Uruk
This city-state is sometimes considered the first
Mesopotamian city c. 4000 - 3000 BCE
Eventually, other Sumerian city states developed,
the most prominent were Ur and Kish.

Uruk (today)
The Euphrates River has shifted over time
and the land occupied by Uruk is now very
arid.
Interestingly, over a space of three or four
hundred years, the people of Uruk built, tore
down, and rebuilt, again and again, as if they
were experimenting with architecture and
urban forms.

Uruk was surprisingly large, just over 6 square
kilometers, larger than classical Athens and almost as
large as ancient Rome at its height.

Uruk culture, along with its urban organization,
was very successful, and other so-called Uruk
colonies spread across the wider Mesopotamia
area.

These Bevel-Rimmed Bowls (BRB) are perhaps the
most common indicator of Uruk culture. They are
found in great number (almost ¾ of all pottery)
and do not hold liquid. Believed to be ration
payments for work performed.

Because these BRBs did not hold liquid and are of
standardized size, they are believed to be ration
payments for work performed.
Agriculture irrigation cities power accounting writing

Ziggurat at Ur: uncovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1930s,
partially reconstructed in 1980s under Saddam Hussein.

Sir Leonard Woolley and his team in the 1920s and 1930s excavated the
ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur.

Woolley and his team examined more than 1800
burials from about 2500 BC. In the midst of
excavations, Woolley noted, “We are doing
marvelously well: I’m sick to death of getting out gold
headdresses.”

PG1237 was the most
spectacular of Ur’s royal
tombs.
Woolley dubbed it “The Great
Death Pit” and it included 6
men and 68 women.

Inside PG789, the Big Man’s burial chamber. Woolley: “The body of the
dead ruler inside the sealed chamber, while outside the enclosure slowly
filled with mourners, ladies in waiting, loyal soldiers and slaves, loudly
bewailing their terrible loss. Then while a solemn music is playing, the
tomb is shut from the outside and the mourners take poison. Lit from the
flames of guttering oil lamps, they die one by one, presumably to be
reborn and serve their master in the next world.”

According to Wooley, PG789 was the grave of
an unknown king, who left behind a loving
wife and queen so devoted that she wished
to lay near him in death.
She, therefore, had her own tomb chamber
placed alongside her husband’s, but being a
queen, she needed her own “death pit” for
her court attendants.
With no other space presumably available,
her death pit was laid over the top of her
husband’s tomb chamber, PG789.
Yet when Wooley unearthed it, the King’s
Chamber unlike Queen’s was empty of
Chamber, the Queen s, goods: the builders of the queen’s tomb had
looted her husband’s chamber!
Queen’s Tomb
King’s Tomb

In Ur, the king was called the Lu-gal, literally, the Big Man.

What the Standard of Ur was used for remains a mystery but it
seems to have royal connections. It was buried in a royal grave
and depicts two contrasting scenes of a king of Ur. It is about
the size of a briefcase.

“One side shows what must be any ruler’s dream of how a tax
system should operate. In the lower two registers, people
calmly line up to offer their tribute … and on the top register,
the king and the elites … feast on the proceeds while somebody
plays the lyre.”

“From having a surplus, you get the emergence of classes,
because some people can live off the labour of others, which
they couldn’t do in small agricultural communities. Then you
get the emergence of a priestly warrior class, or organized
warfare, of tribute and something like a state – which is really
the creation of a new form of power.”

Sumer decline and new empires
By about 2000 BCE the Sumerian city states as a
civilization was finished.
Some have blamed environmental collapse as the
cause of this decline.
A variety of other peoples/cultures (Akkadians,
Medians, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians,
Persians) with different languages invaded/settled
in the Mesopotamia area.
These new people tended to adopt certain
Sumerian practices (such as cuneiform writing).

The oldest known dictionary/encyclopedia is a series of 24
cuneiform tablets from the Akkadian empire with bilingual
wordlists in Sumerian and Akkadian.
The very first entry is a definition for the Sumerian
word hubullu meaning interest-bearing debt, which
says all you need to know about the priorities of the
ancient Sumerians.
Tablets 4 and 5 list naval and terrestrial vehicles, respectively.
Tablets 13 to 15 contain a systematic enumeration of animal names,
tablet 16 lists stones and tablet 17 plants. Tablet 22 lists star
names.

Ishtar Gate was the eighth inner gate in Babylon.
Now in Pergamon Museum in Berlin

The gate was in fact a double gate. The part that is shown in the
Pergamon Museum today is only the smaller, frontal part, while the
larger, back part was considered too large to fit into the constraints
of the structure of the museum. It is in storage, which tells you all
you need to know about the philosophy of 19th century European
archeology.

The Assyrians were from the land just to
the north of Mesopotamia, and have
become a kind of by-word for ancient
militarism.
A wide range of impressive Assyrians palace carvings are
in the British Museum in London and in the Pergamon
Museum in Berlin.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/224511183

http://www.flickr.com/photos/calotype46/6671917417

Assyrian King Ashur-nasir-pal:
“I built a pillar over the city gate,
and I flayed all the chiefs that revolted.
And I covered it with their skin.
Some of them I enclosed alive within the
pillar. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes
Many captives among them I burned with fire
and many I took as living captives.
From some I cut off their noses, others their
ears, some their fingers. Of many I put out
their eyes.
I made one pillar of the living and another
pillar of heads heads. I bound other heads to the
trees around the city.
Their children I burned in the fires. Twenty
men I b h brought to my l palace d and l d enclosed li
alive
within my palace walls.
The rest of their army I consumed with thirst
in the desert.”

Assyrian King Ashurbanipal :
“The tombs of their [the Elamites] old kings I destroyed
and devastated. … For twenty miles I scattered salt and
i prickly plants over all their farms. The dust of their
cities I gathered and took back to Assyria. The noise of
the people, the tread of cattle and sheep, the glad
shouts of rejoicing I banished it from their lands.”
Assyrian King Sennacherib:
“As a hurricane proceeds, I attacked Babylon, and like a
storm I overthrew it. Its inhabitants young and old I did
not spare and with their corpses I filled its streets. The
city itself, from its building foundations to its roofs I
devastated. By fire I overthrew. So the future would not
remember it, I used water to wash away their temples. I
turned everything else into a salted pasture. I took its
soil and transported it to the mountains. Some of it I
kept in a covered jar in my palace.”

Reconstruction of Nineveh. These carvings would
have been painted and would have served a clear
propaganda purpose: obey us … or else suffer the
consequences!

Notice the desolation/emptiness of the
land where these Bulls, which once
adorned the palace at Nineveh (the
Assyrian capital).

Even today, there is not much left of
Nineveh excepts its walls.

Fall of Assyria
After existing as a continuous kingdom/empire from
about 2000 BCE, Assyria was destroyed in 612 at the
height of its power by a coalition of Persians,
Babylonians, and Scythians (horse archers from north of
Mesopotamia).
Its cities were so utterly destroyed that 200 years later,
the Greek writer Xenophon passed by the ruins of its
capital Nineveh with its huge walls (10 meters tall by 15
meters thick with30 km perimeter) in astonishment.
None of the people living near by had any knowledge of
the city nor did they know anything of what had
happened to it.

Modern
reconstruction of a
section of Nineveh’s
walls

Nineveh’’s
30km of walls
superimposed
on Calgary

We tend to think that our civilization and
our way of life will last forever and is the
pinnacle of human achievement.
Yet every civilization that we will look at in this course
also thought that way as well.

Art and Culture - 02 - Bronze Age Overview

Art and Culture - 02 - Bronze Age Overview

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