Mesopotamian Art

Jacob Breeden, frome the Process Art House, is back with his third installment of his art history lessons. This time, we're hopping in our time machine and going to the Mesopotamia Era, 3500 to 300 BCE.

Mesopotamian art and architecture, the art and architecture of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations.

The art and architecture of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations. The name Mesopotamia has been used with varying connotations by ancient writers.

Mesopotamian and its art defined with images of examples from its ancient history, and links to other resources.

Art of Mesopotamia (4500-539 BCE): Ceramics, Statues, Reliefs, Mosaics, Ziggurats: Sumer, Babylonia, Akkad, Assyrian Empire.

Ancient Mesopotamia (which corresponds roughly to modern Iraq) was governed by a variety of cultures, including the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians (see History of the Ancient Middle East).

The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia are the source of the earliest surviving art; these civilizations were situated between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers.  Dating back to 3500 B.C.E., Mesopotamian art was intended to serve as a way to glorify powerful rulers and their connection to divinity. Art was made from natural resources such as stone, shells, alabaster…

History of Mesopotamia was characterized by numerous invasions and conquests which also greatly influenced art and architecture. New peoples and rulers introduced their own sociopolitical systems or adopted the established one, while similar process also took place in art and architecture.

A universally accepted chronology for the entire ancient Near East remains to be established. On the basis of the Royal Canon of Ptolemy, a second century A.D. astronomer, regnal dates can be determined with certainty in Babylonia only as far back as 747 B.C. (the accession of King Nabonassar).

Wikipedia's information about art of Mesopotamia.

Exquisite art and artifacts from the world's earliest civilization are dazzling visitors to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Read and learn for free about the following article: Sumerian art, an introduction.