meso Flashcards
Irrigation
“flood management/ containing water” to grow plants
Gilgamesh
hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology
Hierarchical scale
the use of size to denote the relative importance of subjects in an artwork. Ex: making the “ruler” taller and larger in a drawing.
Mosaic
a picture or pattern made from the arrangement of small colored pieces of hard materials, such as stone, tile, or glass
Temple Economy
based primarily on agriculture. The Mesopotamians grew a variety of crops, including barley, wheat, onions, turnips, grapes, apples and dates.
Theocratic Urbanism
- Agro-engineering
- Temple architecture
- Territorial imperative to control trade for scarce resources
- Priestly class as corporate owners/producers
Sumerians
Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language. The Sumerians created art from different materials like semi-precious stones, shells, wood, red limestone, metals like gold, silver, and copper, to name a few
Mesopotamia
- Grain as specialized industry
Obsidian specialized trade - 3,500 first Temples as buildings for public rituals
- 3,100 BCE The earliest tablets from Uruk used a complex system of signs
(pictograms and numbers) on clay tablets
2500 BCE the Ziggurat - First bureaucracy of the world: critical
to establishing a TEMPLE ECONOMY
– a temple was first and foremost
an economic center
Mesopotamia was the land between rivers? T/F
true
Clay tablets from the Uruk period
Writing in the ancient Sumerian city Uruk was time-consuming and literacy was likely limited at the time. Therefore, writing was mainly used for essential record-keeping.
Votive Figures from the Temple of Abu, Eshnunna, ca. 2750 BCE
All of the statuettes represent mortals, rather than deities, with their hands folded in front of their chests in a gesture of prayer, usually holding the small beakers the Sumerians used for libations in honor of the Gods. These statuettes functioned as a symbolic “stand-in” for the donor in worship, remember ziggurat temples were very restricted access in Mesopotamia. These objects were carefully interred under the floor of the temple
Eridu, (Village: 5000 BCE; city c. 2900 BC)
The temples like the one at Eridu were central to urban life because each city had its chief god who was thought to be the patron and protector of that city. If calamities befell the city, it was assumed that the local god had “deserted” his temple and hence his people. Elaborate rituals were performed to coax the god to remain in the temple and establish peace and tranquillity in the city
Ziggurat (city: ca. 2500 BCE – 2000 BCE):
The ziggurat was always built with a core of mud brick and an exterior covered with baked brick. It had no internal chambers and was usually square or rectangular, averaging either 170 feet.
Head of an Akkadian ruler, (found Mosul, Iraq), Akkadian period c. 2250-2220 BCE.
One of the earliest representations of a real person. Head of an Akkadian ruler, from Nineveh, Iraq, 2300-2200BCE. Bronze, 30.5cm high
the Ur III period (ca. 2100–2000 BC)
are actually economic texts listing transactions involving animals, produce from farmland, and even banking records of deposits and withdrawals from “silver” accounts.
