Mesopotamian Art – Exploring the Architecture and Art of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia refers to the region in Western Asia spanning modern-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Often called the birthplace of civilization, it holds the first records of written history. Artifacts survive from the hunter-gatherer era through the Bronze Age and the empires that followed. This article traces that history and art.
A Timeline of Mesopotamian Art
Mesopotamian art unfolds across roughly five thousand years and several distinct cultures, so it helps to see the turning points before working through the details below.
| c. 5400-4500 BCE | Ubaid farmers settle Eridu and other sites in southern Mesopotamia, laying the groundwork for Sumerian city life. |
| c. 3200 BCE | Rapid urban growth during the Uruk period produces the earliest cuneiform writing. |
| 2900-2334 BCE | Early Dynastic city-states fortify and compete; the Royal Cemetery of Ur is in use. |
| 2334 BCE | Sargon of Akkad unites the city-states into the first known empire. |
| 2112-2004 BCE | The Third Dynasty of Ur revives Sumerian rule after Akkad’s collapse. |
| 1792-1750 BCE | Hammurabi rules Babylon and issues his law code. |
| 1365-609 BCE | Assyria rises to power, loses much of its territory by the end of the second millennium BCE, and expands again from the ninth century BCE to reach its height as the Neo-Assyrian Empire. |
| 612 BCE | The fall of Nineveh ends Assyrian rule; the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, founded under Nabopolassar, becomes the dominant regional power, with his son Nebuchadnezzar II succeeding him in 605 BCE. |
| 539 BCE | Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon, ending Mesopotamian political independence. |
The Early Cultures of Mesopotamian Art
During the Early Bronze Age, southern Mesopotamia, within what is now southern Iraq, was known as Sumer. Despite the earliest recorded historical events only dating back to around 2900 BCE, scholars today think that southern Mesopotamia was first settled by the Ubaidians from around 5400 BCE, with the Ubaid period running to roughly 4000 BCE.
They worked masonry, metal, leather, and textiles, developed trade, and drained portions of marshland for agricultural use.
Bordering along the Persian Gulf was the city of Eridu, which Sumerian tradition regarded as the first city in the world, the place where kingship itself descended from heaven. Archaeology cannot confirm that legend, but excavations do show continuous occupation at the site from around 5400 BCE, making it one of the oldest known settlements in southern Mesopotamia. It was home to three cultures that became integrated due to their shared geographical position – the fishermen, the Semitic speaking nomadic shepherds, and the Ubaidian farmers. These three groups were all specialists in food production which eventually led to a surplus of food that could be stored.
Unlike hunter-gatherers, this ability to produce and store food meant that instead of constantly migrating in search of resources, people could settle in one place. With the surplus of food came an increase in the population, which in turn required a labor force that could produce goods, services, crafts, and art for the inhabitants.
During the early Sumerian period, an early writing system called cuneiform was developed.
From this writing system, as well as other ancient Mesopotamian artifacts such as pictograms, we can deduct that there was an abundance of Mesopotamian art traditions. Clay was used for producing pottery and tablets for creating documents, using the wedge-shaped cuneiform script they had developed.
Metal was used to create daggers, and gold and copper could be hammered and were used for decorative collars, necklaces, and plates.
The region grew to a point that it was divided by the rivers, canals, and other geographical boundaries into many independent cities. Each of these cities had a temple that was created in honor of their various deities, and each temple had a holy governor who was connected to the religious ceremonies of the city.
The Ubaid Period
The art of Mesopotamia from this period is recognizable by the distinctive painting technique applied to the pottery. These zig-zag and circular patterns were created in a domestic capacity on a slow wheel. It would eventually become a popular style throughout the region. It was during this early period that farmers first settled at Eridu to pursue these agricultural practices.
Although Eridu was eventually bypassed in size by the nearby city of Ur, it remained an influential center for religious matters.
The Uruk Period
As the Ubaid period gave way to the Uruk period, the focus shifted from painted domestic wares made on slow wheels to large-scale, unpainted works produced on fast wheels by groups of specialist artists. During this period of economic growth in the region, many new cities began to be developed along the prosperous trade routes of the rivers and canals.
Each of these cities had governing bodies that employed people to take on specialized roles.
Mesopotamian artifacts of the Uruk period have been discovered over a large range of land – from Central Iran to the Mediterranean Sea and all the way to the Taurus Mountains of Turkey. The Uruk culture had a great influence on surrounding areas due to its spread via the traders of Sumer, who eventually began developing their own cultures and economies that would compete with the Sumerians.
During this period cities were mostly theocratic, meaning they believed a deity ruled over all of society and that a priest was god’s representative of earthly matters.
These holy rulers would also call on a council of male and female elders for assistance. Warfare was already organized in this period: the Uruk-period settlement at Habuba Kabira in Syria was ringed by a mud-brick wall about three meters thick with roughly fifty defensive towers, and burnt destruction levels at Hamoukar point to fighting between communities well before 3000 BCE.
By around 2900 BCE, Uruk had grown into the largest city in the world at the time, with an estimated population of 50,000 to 80,000 people.
Gilgamesh
Enmebaragesi of Kish is the earliest Mesopotamian ruler whose existence is confirmed by archaeological inscriptions, and he appears as a rival king’s father in the Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, composed around 2100 BCE. Because Enmebaragesi is historically attested, many scholars take his appearance in the Gilgamesh tradition as evidence that Gilgamesh himself may have been a real king of Uruk, and not merely a legendary hero. As depicted in the epic, this period was marred by violence, leading to many undefended villages disappearing and cities becoming increasingly more walled in.
Ceramics in Mesopotamian Art
Ceramics in Mesopotamian art saw major shifts in variety and style during the fourth millennium BCE with the invention of the potter’s wheel. Hand-shaping clay is far older, with pottery production emerging in East Asia as early as 20,000 to 10,000 BCE, but throwing clay on a wheel to shape and mass-produce vessels was a Mesopotamian innovation of this later period.
Pottery in Mesopotamia predates the Chalcolithic Era: Hassuna pottery in northern Mesopotamia dates to around 7000 BCE, while the Copper or Chalcolithic Era covers the later Ubaid and Uruk periods discussed above.
The Chalcolithic Era
As noted above, Ubaid pottery was hand-painted on slow wheels; Uruk ceramics that followed were produced far more quickly and in greater volume on the fast wheel.
The Akkadian Empire
Under Akkadian rule, potters continued producing vases, jars, and bowls, mostly unpainted like Uruk-period ceramics, though a few examples carry abstract patterns or reliefs.
Ur III
Ur III potters kept working in this same unpainted style but in more elaborate forms, producing vessels for storing liquids as well as flowerpots and cake stands. Clay tablets were also produced to keep records by writing on them with styluses made from reed. Tablets could be dried or baked in a kiln to harden them, though firing was not a reliable sign that a text was meant for archival keeping; many surviving tablets were only baked accidentally, in the fires that destroyed the buildings that housed them.
Tablets could also be used for keeping stock of animals, workers, wages, and other daily administrative tasks.
Babylonian Ceramics
Ceramics produced during this period indicates a marked return to the use of abstract patterns painted on the surface of the pottery, as well as a further increase in the array of forms available for various purposes, both practical and aesthetic. Ceramic Mesopotamian artifacts from this period such as jars, vases, and goblets have been found with remnants of abstract painting on the clay exterior.
Sculpture in Mesopotamia
For more than 2000 years, Mesopotamian art and sculpture served political and devotional purposes, though the methods varied greatly from period to period. Recent archaeological research dates sculpture from the wider region to the 10th millennium BCE, during the transition to settled life and long before urban civilization began. Common motifs were animals and human forms, as well as seals with imagery and cuneiform writing inscribed on it.
Sculptures were made from a variety of materials such as stones like gypsum and alabaster, metals like bronze and copper, as well as traditional terra cotta.
The table below is a quick way to place a piece by eye before reading the period-by-period sections that follow.
| Culture / Period | Approx. Dates | Sculptural Style | Signature Works |
| Sumerian (Early Dynastic) | 2900-2334 BCE | Frontal, static poses; large inlaid eyes; figures ranked by size (hieratic scale) | Tell Asmar votive figures; treasures of Queen Puabi’s tomb; Standard of Ur |
| Akkadian | 2334-2154 BCE | More naturalistic anatomy and individualized faces; dynamic battle narratives | Mask of Sargon (disputed attribution); Victory Stele of Naram-Sin |
| Neo-Sumerian (Lagash II and Ur III) | 2112-2004 BCE | Calm, restrained portraiture; hands clasped in prayer | Statues of Gudea (Lagash II) |
| Old Babylonian | 1894-1595 BCE | Legal and narrative relief; deities shown handing over symbols of authority | Code of Hammurabi stele; Burney Relief |
| Assyrian | 1365-609 BCE | Large-scale narrative wall reliefs of hunting and war; monumental gateway guardians | Lamassu gate guardians; Ashurbanipal’s lion-hunt reliefs |
Hunter-Gatherers and the Halaf Culture
Small, portable sculpture is one common feature of art from this period, since hunter-gatherer groups were often nomadic and needed pieces they could carry over long distances – though this was not universal: at sites such as Göbekli Tepe, hunter-gatherers in Upper Mesopotamia also carved monumental stone pillars several meters tall.
Once agricultural practices became common, many artists still chose to create small sculptures for personal devotional or ritual use.
Many of these sculptures emphasize the female form, with exaggerated proportions given to the breasts, thighs, and buttocks; their exact meaning is not known, though they may be connected with fertility. A prime example is the Halaf-culture seated female figurine of around 6000-5100 BCE now in the Louvre Museum. Typical of the period, the sculpture displays little or no facial detail and no separately rendered hands or feet, while emphasizing the breasts and thighs; the significance of its seated pose, with the thighs bent, is not known.
Uruk Period Sculpture
The sculptures of the Uruk period reflect concepts such as communication and spirituality. A prime example from this period of the late prehistoric era is the Uruk trough, dating to around 3300 BCE. Historians suggest that the trough made from gypsum was part of an offering created for the goddess of fertility and love, Inanna. The exterior of the Uruk trough is decorated with various sacred objects commonly associated with the goddess such as reliefs of reeds and animals.
Based on these observations, historians believe it was used for spiritual or ritual reasons rather than for agricultural use.
Early forms of document notarization have been found from this period in the form of cylinder seals, which were carved from stone and contained images of animals, and early language systems. These were used by officials or their representatives as a kind of official signature, by rolling the cylinder in wet clay, leaving a graphic imprint behind. These cylinders were also used as jewelry and have been found in the tombs of nobility along with their valuable stones and precious metals.
Imagery with a strong narrative quality was the popular motif of the period as can be seen in the cylinders, troughs, and other examples of sculpture from this period.
This period is also marked by a noticeable improvement in the portrayal of the human body and face, as can be observed in the sculpture from around 3000 BCE, the Mask of Warka, or the Lady of Uruk. The marble mask was named after the city it was found in and it is all that remains of a sculpture that once consisted of a body made from wood, with hair made of gold leaf, and eyes and eyebrows inlaid with jewelry. As was common at the time, the sculpture was painted to create a more life-like appearance but has since faded.
Early Dynastic Period
During the Early Dynastic Period of 2900 to 2400 BCE, the sculptors of art in Mesopotamia created works that built on the older traditions and developed styles that became more complex with time. Copper was now the most prominently used medium, although many artists still used stone and clay. The subject matter of sculpture during this period was focused on religion, social interaction, and war.
Cylinder art during this period becomes increasingly detailed, as can be observed in the seal that was discovered in the tomb of Queen Puabi.
The seal is divided into two registers, each showing a palace banquet scene with seated men and women; Puabi herself is thought to be one of the figures shown, though the imagery does not securely identify a queen presiding over one register and a king over the other. The most prominent figures appear larger than the others, a form of visually denoting rank called the hieratic scale. There is also cuneiform inscribed on this fine example of sculpture in ancient Mesopotamian arts.
Another notable work from this period, the bull-headed Great Lyre, was found in grave PG 789, a royal grave in the same cemetery as Puabi’s tomb at Ur.
The bull’s head was a mixed-media sculpture made from sheet gold, with a lapis lazuli beard and shell eyes. Based on similar bull’s heads found at ceremonial sites by archeologists, the head most likely was used to decorate a lyre used in ceremonies and burial rituals, although most of the lyre found in the grave has disintegrated over the centuries.
Another object recovered from the same Royal Cemetery of Ur is the Standard of Ur, a hollow wooden box about the size of a small suitcase, its two long sloped sides inlaid with shell, red limestone, and lapis lazuli. One side shows a military procession, from foot soldiers and chariots to captives brought before the king; the other shows a banquet celebrating a victory, with the king again shown largest under the hieratic scale. Its original function is unknown. The modern name comes from an early theory that it was carried on a pole as a military standard, an idea most historians no longer accept.
Sculptures depicting the human form have also been used as religious offerings in the temples of Mesopotamia.
The most well-known examples of these are the Tell Asmar figures dated from somewhere between 2700 and 2600 BCE. This group of 12 human sculptures is generally interpreted as depicting male and female worshippers in perpetual prayer, and were created in the hieratic scale, as with the cylinders of Queen Puabi.
The sculptures representing worshippers were created with their hands clasped before the chest, a pose associated with perpetual prayer and attentive devotion. Depending on the position on the hierarchical scale, the sculptures were made from materials ranging from gypsum to limestone to alabaster.
The common feature of all the human figures is the large hollow pupils which once held stones in the hollows to create a more realistic appearance. The eyes represented significant spiritual power, especially in regard to the eyes of the gods. The tallest of the figures has traditionally been identified as Abu, the vegetation god, though neither that identification nor the dedication of the so-called Square Temple at Tell Asmar to Abu is securely established; the figure is made from limestone, shell, bitumen, and alabaster.
Akkadian Empire
The period of the Akkadian Empire lasted from 2334 to 2154 BCE, and the sculpture of that period grew increasingly themed around war and politics, and the style grew exponentially more life-like in its representation of the human form.
Much of the sculpture art of Mesopotamia from this period depicts a mixture of realistic and stylized features as can be seen in the bronze head of an Akkadian ruler found at Nineveh, traditionally called the Mask of Sargon although it may equally depict Manishtushu or Naram-Sin.
While his facial hair and eyes are stylized, his nose and mouth are created with a naturalistic style and give the impression of a unique individual, which was rare for the time. The eyes of the portrait are hollow as they were once inlaid, and the head was cast using the lost wax process.
Akkadian royal art often emphasizes imperial ideology and military conquest.
This can be seen in the Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, carved during his reign, around 2254 to 2218 BCE. The king is represented wearing a horned helmet, signifying that he is a divine figure. Naram-Sin is depicted as larger than the other figures such as his enemies and soldiers, typical of the hieratic style. His soldiers watch the scene from a vantage point as Naram-Sin stands atop of the dead enemy soldiers. To enhance the drama of the scene, the figures are arranged in a dynamic composition carved in bas-relief. The cuneiform text provides context on the right side of the panel. Centuries later, the stele was carried off as war booty to the Elamite city of Susa; it was rediscovered there by French archaeologists in 1898.
Ur III and Old Babylonian Sculpture
After the Akkadian Empire collapsed, Neo-Sumerian artistic traditions revived, first under the rulers of Lagash II and then under the Third Dynasty of Ur. Well-known works from the Lagash II period are the portrait statues of Gudea, a governor of the city-state of Lagash who ruled around 2144 to 2124 BCE. Roughly two dozen of these statues survive, carved mostly from diorite, an extremely hard imported stone that was difficult to carve but took a fine polish. They show Gudea seated or standing with his hands clasped in prayer, wearing a fringed robe and a distinctive brimmed cap, and were placed in temples as permanent stand-ins for the ruler in acts of worship.
A few centuries later, under the Old Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned around 1792 to 1750 BCE, sculpture again served a legal and political purpose. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest surviving law codes, is inscribed on a basalt stele about 2.25 meters tall. At its top, a relief shows Hammurabi standing before the seated sun god Shamash, who hands him the rod and ring symbolizing the authority to rule and to dispense justice. Like the Naram-Sin stele, it was carried off to Susa by Elamite raiders and excavated there by French archaeologists a few years later, in 1901; both are now in the Louvre.
Babylon and Assyria
As the Middle Bronze Age gave way to the Late Bronze Age in the second millennium BCE, Assyria and Babylonia became the most prominent cultures of the era in the Near East. Although stone was also used for sculpture, clay was the most commonly used material. The Mesopotamian artifacts from this period reveal mostly the production of small free-standing sculptures, cylinder seals, and reliefs, as well as non-expensive plaques of molded pottery for domestic religious use.
During the period of Babylonian culture, depictions of humans became more naturalistic and less stylized than before.
The Assyrians developed their own style of large, highly detailed reliefs in painted alabaster or stone. These reliefs mostly portrayed activities that were practiced by members of royalty, such as hunting or battles, and were intended to be housed in palaces. Animals such as lions and horses are depicted in great detail while humans were posed in comparatively rigid stances, but also contain great attention to detail.
Freestanding sculpture that could be viewed from every angle was comparatively rare among the Assyrians. The massive guardian sculptures, normally winged beasts or lions, that were positioned next to the gateways to royal premises, were largely carved in high relief and designed to be viewed from the front and the side rather than in the round.
Assyrians were initially hugely influenced by the style of the Babylonians but began to display distinctive Assyrian characteristics around 1500 BCE.
An example of Mesopotamian art from this period is the Burney Relief, created somewhere between 1800 and 1750 BCE. This terracotta plaque is from the Old-Babylonian period and portrays the Queen of the Night, a naked and winged goddess flanked by a pair of owls and sporting bird talons for feet. This high relief sculpture is particularly notable for its size and distinctive iconography, which hints at its use in a cult ceremonial setting.
Mesopotamian and Babylonian Architecture
To the ancient people of Mesopotamia, the craft of architecture was a divine gift from the gods. A lack of suitable building stone in the region made clay and sun-baked bricks the material of choice for building structures. Pilasters and columns were common features of Babylonian architecture, as well as painted frescoes and the use of enameled tiles.
The architects of Assyria were hugely influenced by Babylonian architecture, but built their palaces out of brick and stone.
These Assyrian palaces lined their mud-brick walls with carved gypsum slabs whose reliefs were originally brightly painted, though the paint has now largely faded. The load-bearing architectural design was the dominant building style, however, structures like the Ishtar Gate from the sixth century BCE were greatly influenced by the use of round arches in Mesopotamia during this period.
Domestic Architecture
In Mesopotamia’s early days, families built their own houses from wooden doors, mud bricks, and reeds. Houses were load-bearing with no windows, so the door was the only opening.
There was a distinct division between public and private life in Sumerian culture, meaning that very few interiors of homes could be viewed directly from the street. Depending on family size and social status, the houses would vary in size, but the layout was generally the same with the space being divided up into one large central room and smaller rooms built around it.
During the Ubaid period, it became common practice to incorporate courtyards into the designs to help create a natural air coolant, a practice that still continues today in modern Iraqi architecture.
Ziggurats
Every ancient culture of distinction reached an era of creating huge monuments as can be seen in Egypt and ancient sites in South America and even Asia. For the people of the Mesopotamian culture, one of the most incredible achievements was the construction of their ziggurat structures. Ziggurats are similar to pyramids, consisting of terraced steps with receding levels, built from a core of sun-dried mud brick faced with fired brick. Ziggurats would usually have a temple or shrine at the top of the steps.
These structures were only allowed to be entered by priests and other religious officials for the offering of gifts and temple maintenance and were not open to the public for worship or visitations. The earliest temple platforms that developed into the ziggurat form date to the fourth millennium BCE, built by the Sumerian culture. The ziggurat form continued to be built and restored from the fourth millennium BCE until Persian times, around 500 BCE.
A well-preserved example of ziggurat architecture is the Chogha Zanbil Ziggurat, built around 1250 BCE by the Elamite king Untash-Napirisha in honor of Inshushinak, the patron god of Susa.
After studying the sizable width and height of the ziggurats, modern-day archeologists and architects have suggested that they were created using a system of pulleys and ramps to hoist the massive bricks up the sides of the structure. The topography of Mesopotamia became increasingly higher as older buildings were built on top of crumbing older ones, due to the deteriorating quality of sun-dried bricks as compared to oven-baked bricks.
Throughout the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, sun-baked bricks were the most commonly used building material.
Political Architecture
Public Mesopotamian buildings such as palaces and temples were highly decorated on the outside with features such as enameling, gold leaf, and vibrant paint colors. Many elements were multi-functional and were used for structural support and decoration, such as terra cotta panels and color stones used to delay the deterioration of the public structures as well as strengthen the public buildings. Carved stone slabs became more prominently used to line the lower sections of important walls between the 13th and 10th centuries BCE, though Assyrian palaces continued to be built primarily of sun-baked mud brick.
Bas reliefs, wall paintings, and colored stone were used together as decoration, rather than one replacing another.
The Mesopotamian reliefs and sculptures produced under Ashurnasirpal II, Sargon II, and Ashurbanipal show how relief art developed from the formal, ritual-heavy panels of Ashurnasirpal II toward the longer, more dynamic and strikingly naturalistic narrative compositions of Ashurbanipal’s reign.
From 2900 BCE (Early Dynastic period) to 612 BCE, when the fall of Nineveh ended Assyrian rule, palaces grew immensely in complexity and sheer scale. These early palaces were, however, still much larger than the architecture of domestic homes as well as ornately decorated to set them apart from domestic architecture.
Palaces were often laid out like small cities, as they had to support entire royal families as well as all their servants.
These huge structures included temples, sanctuaries, and places to house and bury the dead. Similar to the architecture of the domestic structures, architects added a courtyard to these spaces in order to facilitate airflow and temperature regulation. These courtyards would also function as ceremonial spaces and served utilitarian purposes as well.
During the reign of the Assyrian Empire, palaces began to be fitted with their own gates and the walls were highly decorated with narrative reliefs. A prime example of this style is the alto relief at the entry gate of the Palace of Dur-Sharrukin.
Belonging to Sargon II, the palace gate featured the mythological Babylonian creature known as the Lamassu, which had the body of a bull, huge wings, and the head of a man.
In other examples of this deity, his head is facing forward and they wear conical caps. Sometimes the body is that of a lion instead of a bull, in some versions the deity assumes a female form. These mythical creatures, also known as Shedu, can be traced in the literature and art of Mesopotamia as far back as around 3000 BCE, and the same guardian form was later adopted in Achaemenid Persia, where similar figures flank the Gate of All Nations at Persepolis, built in the fifth century BCE.
A structural system that often gets accredited to the Romans was in fact used by Mesopotamian engineers well over a thousand years earlier: the round arch. While the normally used load-bearing walls were not strong enough to handle the pressure of too many windows or doorways, by adding round arches, the structures could absorb more of the pressure, which allowed for the inclusion of larger openings in their architecture for improved wind flow and sunlight.
Round arches in Mesopotamian building go back to the third millennium BCE, in the brick-vaulted drains and tomb chambers at sites such as Ur; by the eighth century BCE they appear in palace entryways such as Dur-Sharrukin, where the form is used in the central portal as well as in windows on the left and right of the entrance.
The most famous example of the round arch in Babylonian architecture can be found in the Ishtar Gate from 575 BCE.
The gate is now housed at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin but was originally part of the Processional Way of the Babylonian city. This ornate gate is decorated with glazed lapis-blue brick and bas reliefs of animal figures, including bulls sacred to the weather god Adad and mušḫuššu dragons associated with Marduk, along with floral motifs; lions sacred to Ishtar, the goddess of war and fertility, lined the adjoining Processional Way.
Take a look at our Mesopotamian art period webstory here!
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Mesopotamia Still Exist Today?
Mesopotamia refers to a region from ancient antiquity which today lies largely in Iraq, together with parts of Syria, southeastern Turkey, and western Iran, mostly situated between the Tigres/Euphrates River systems and their associated canals.
What Are the Most Common Forms of Mesopotamian Art?
The art of Mesopotamia ranges from the early use of ceramics which were painted with abstract patterns, to the creation of sculpture effigies for religious purposes, and styles used in Mesopotamian architecture to create their ornate temples and palace gates. Characteristic surviving art and writing materials include clay tablets and reed styluses, and sculpture, relief carving and incised designs on clay dominate the surviving record; there is no comparable tradition of freestanding drawing.
Was Gilgamesh a Real Historical King?
Possibly. Gilgamesh appears on the Sumerian King List as an early king of Uruk, and the discovery of inscriptions confirming that Enmebaragesi of Kish, a ruler named alongside Gilgamesh in the earliest poems about him, really existed has convinced many scholars that Gilgamesh may have been a real king whose deeds were later reshaped into the legendary hero of the epic, though no inscription of his own has been found.
Where Can Mesopotamian Art Be Seen Today?
Major pieces are held in the Louvre, the British Museum, and Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, largely as a result of nineteenth and early twentieth century excavations. The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad holds the largest collection in the region itself; it was extensively looted in 2003 during the Iraq War, and archaeologists and heritage organizations have worked since to recover and catalogue what was lost. Sites such as Nimrud also suffered deliberate destruction during the 2014 to 2017 ISIS occupation of northern Iraq, and restoration work at several affected sites continues.
Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.
Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.
Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team.
Cite this Article
Isabella, Meyer, “Mesopotamian Art – Exploring the Architecture and Art of Mesopotamia.” Art in Context. December 1, 2021. URL: https://artincontext.org/mesopotamian-art/
Meyer, I. (2021, 1 December). Mesopotamian Art – Exploring the Architecture and Art of Mesopotamia. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/mesopotamian-art/
Meyer, Isabella. “Mesopotamian Art – Exploring the Architecture and Art of Mesopotamia.” Art in Context, December 1, 2021. https://artincontext.org/mesopotamian-art/.
