Introduction to the Ancient Near East

Introduction to the Ancient Near East

Ancient Near East: Cradle of civilization

Home to some of the earliest and greatest empires, the Near East is often referred to as the cradle of civilization.

Map of the ancient Near East (underlying map © Google)

Map of the ancient Near East (underlying map © Google)

The cradle of civilization

Some of the earliest complex urban centers can be found in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (early cities also arose in the Indus Valley and ancient China). The history of Mesopotamia, however, is inextricably tied to the greater region, which is comprised of the modern nations of Egypt, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf states and Turkey. We often refer to this region as the Near or Middle East.

What’s in a name?

Why is this region named this way? What is it in the middle of or near to? It is the proximity of these countries to the West (to Europe) that led this area to be termed “the near east.” Ancient Near Eastern Art has long been part of the history of Western art, but history didn’t have to be written this way. It is largely because of the West’s interests in the Biblical “Holy Land” that ancient Near Eastern materials have been be regarded as part of the Western canon of the history of art.  An interest in finding the locations of cities mentioned in the Bible (such as Nineveh and Babylon) inspired the original English and French 19th century archaeological expeditions to the Near East. These sites were discovered and their excavations revealed to the world a style of art which had been lost.

Entrance to Ninevah Court, Illustration from: Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Ninevah Court in the Crystal Palace (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1854), p. 39

Entrance to Ninevah Court, Illustration from: Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Ninevah Court in the Crystal Palace (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1854), p. 39.

The excavations inspired The Nineveh Court at the 1851 World’s Fair in London and a style of decorative art and architecture called Assyrian Revival.  Ancient Near Eastern art remains popular today; in 2007 a 2.25 inch high, early 3rd millennium limestone sculpture, the Guennol Lioness, was sold for 57.2 million dollars, the second most expensive piece of sculpture sold at that time.

A complex history

The history of the Ancient Near East is complex and the names of rulers and locations are often difficult to read, pronounce and spell. Moreover, this is a part of the world which today remains remote from the West culturally while political tensions have impeded mutual understanding. However, once you get a handle on the general geography of the area and its history, the art reveals itself as uniquely beautiful, intimate and fascinating in its complexity.

A fishing boat in the Euphrates Southern Iraq (photo: Aziz1005, CC BY 4.0)

A fishing boat in the Euphrates Southern Iraq (photo: Aziz1005, CC BY 4.0)

Geography and the growth of cities

Mesopotamia remains a region of stark geographical contrasts: vast deserts rimmed by rugged mountain ranges, punctuated by lush oases. Flowing through this topography are rivers and it was the irrigation systems that drew off the water from these rivers, specifically in southern Mesopotamia, that provided the support for the very early urban centers here.

The region lacks stone (for building), precious metals and timber. Historically, it has relied on the long-distance trade of its agricultural products to secure these materials. The large-scale irrigation systems and labor required for extensive farming was managed by a centralized authority. The early development of this authority, over large numbers of people in an urban center, is really what distinguishes Mesopotamia and gives it a special position in the history of Western culture. Here, for the first time, thanks to ample food and a strong administrative class, the West develops a very high level of craft specialization and artistic production.


Additional resources:

Read a chapter in our textbook, Reframing Art History, about new approaches to Ancient Near Eastern art

Mesopotamia on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Timeline of Art History

The Guennol Lioness (video)

Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For instructors: related lesson plan on Art History Teaching Resources


More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page

Cite this page as: Dr. Senta German, “Ancient Near East: Cradle of civilization,” in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015, accessed April 9, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/ancient-near-east-cradle-of-civilization/.

Cuneiform

Cuneiform, an introduction

The earliest writing we know of dates back to around 3000 B.C.E. and was probably invented by the Sumerians, living in major cities with centralized economies in what is now southern Iraq. The earliest tablets with written inscriptions represent the work of administrators, perhaps of large temple institutions, recording the allocation of rations or the movement and storage of goods. Temple officials needed to keep records of the grain, sheep, and cattle entering or leaving their stores and farms and it became impossible to rely on memory. So, an alternative method was required and the very earliest texts were pictures of the items scribes needed to record (known as pictographs).

Early writing tablet recording the allocation of beer, 3100–3000 B.C.E, Late Prehistoric period, clay, probably from southern Iraq. (© Trustees of the British Museum) The symbol for beer, an upright jar with pointed base, appears three times on the tablet. Beer was the most popular drink in Mesopotamia and was issued as rations to workers. Alongside the pictographs are five different shaped impressions, representing numerical symbols. Over time these signs became more abstract and wedge-like, or “cuneiform.” The signs are grouped into boxes and, at this early date, are usually read from top to bottom and right to left. One sign, in the bottom row on the left, shows a bowl tipped towards a schematic human head. This is the sign for “to eat.”

Early writing tablet recording the allocation of beer, 3100–3000 B.C.E, Late Prehistoric period, clay, probably from southern Iraq. (© Trustees of the British Museum) The symbol for beer, an upright jar with pointed base, appears three times on the tablet. Beer was the most popular drink in Mesopotamia and was issued as rations to workers. Alongside the pictographs are five different shaped impressions, representing numerical symbols. Over time these signs became more abstract and wedge-like, or “cuneiform.” The signs are grouped into boxes and, at this early date, are usually read from top to bottom and right to left. One sign, in the bottom row on the left, shows a bowl tipped towards a schematic human head. This is the sign for “to eat.”

Writing, the recording of a spoken language, emerged from earlier recording systems at the end of the fourth millennium. The first written language in Mesopotamia is called Sumerian. Most of the early tablets come from the site of Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, and it may have been here that this form of writing was invented.

These texts were drawn on damp clay tablets using a pointed tool. It seems the scribes realized it was quicker and easier to produce representations of such things as animals, rather than naturalistic impressions of them. They began to draw marks in the clay to make up signs, which were standardized so they could be recognized by many people.

Cuneiform

From these beginnings, cuneiform signs were put together and developed to represent sounds, so they could be used to record spoken language. Once this was achieved, ideas and concepts could be expressed and communicated in writing.

Cuneiform is one of the oldest forms of writing known. It means “wedge-shaped,” because people wrote it using a reed stylus cut to make a wedge-shaped mark on a clay tablet. Letters enclosed in clay envelopes, as well as works of literature, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh have been found. Historical accounts have also come to light, as have huge libraries such as that belonging to the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. Cuneiform writing was used to record a variety of information such as temple activities, business, and trade. Cuneiform was also used to write stories, myths, and personal letters. The latest known example of cuneiform is an astronomical text from 75 C.E. During its 3,000-year history, cuneiform was used to write around 15 different languages including Sumerian, AkkadianBabylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian, and Old Persian.

Cuneiform tablets at the British Museum

The department’s collection of cuneiform tablets is among the most important in the world. It contains approximately 130,000 texts and fragments and is perhaps the largest collection outside of Iraq. The centerpiece of the collection is the Library of Ashurbanipal, comprising many thousands of the most important tablets ever found. The significance of these tablets was immediately realized by the Library’s excavator, Austin Henry Layard, who wrote:

They furnish us with materials for the complete decipherment of the cuneiform character, for restoring the language and history of Assyria, and for inquiring into the customs, sciences, and . . . literature, of its people.

The Library of Ashurbanipal is the oldest surviving royal library in the world. British Museum archaeologists discovered more than 30,000 cuneiform tablets and fragments at his capital, Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik). Alongside historical inscriptions, letters, and administrative and legal texts, were found thousands of divinatory, magical, medical, literary and lexical texts. This treasure-house of learning has held unparalleled importance to the modern study of the ancient Near East ever since the first fragments were excavated in the 1850s.

The Flood Tablet, part of the "Epic of Gilgamesh," 7th century B.C.E., Neo-Assyrian, 15.24 x 13.33 x 3.17 cm, from Nineveh, northern Iraq (© Trustees of the British Museum)

The Flood Tablet, part of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” 7th century B.C.E., Neo-Assyrian, 15.24 x 13.33 x 3.17 cm, from Nineveh, northern Iraq (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Epic of Gilgamesh and The Flood Tablet

The best known piece of literature from ancient Mesopotamia is the story of Gilgamesh, a legendary ruler of Uruk, and his search for immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a huge work, the longest piece of literature in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia and Assyria). It was known across the ancient Near East, with versions also found at Hattusas (capital of the Hittites), Emar in Syria, and Megiddo in the Levant.

This, the eleventh tablet of the Epic, describes the meeting of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtim. Like Noah in the Hebrew Bible, Utnapishtim had been forewarned of a plan by the gods to send a great flood. He built a boat and loaded it with all his precious possessions, his kith and kin, domesticated and wild animals and skilled craftsmen of every kind.

Utnapishtim survived the flood for six days while mankind was destroyed, before landing on a mountain called Nimush. He released a dove and a swallow but they did not find dry land to rest on, and returned. Finally a raven that he released did not return, showing that the waters must have receded.

This Assyrian version of the Old Testament flood story is the most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia. It was identified in 1872 by George Smith, an assistant in The British Museum. On reading the text “he … jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself.”

This tablet contains both a cuneiform inscription and a unique map of the Mesopotamian world. Babylon is shown in the centre (the rectangle in the top half of the circle), and Assyria, Elam, and other places are also named. Map of the World, Late Babylonian, c. 500 B.C.E., clay, findspot: Abu Habba, 12.2 x 8.c cm (© Trustees of the British Museum)

This tablet contains both a cuneiform inscription and a unique map of the Mesopotamian world. Babylon is shown in the centre (the rectangle in the top half of the circle), and Assyria, Elam, and other places are also named. Map of the World, Late Babylonian, c. 500 B.C.E., clay, findspot: Abu Habba, 12.2 x 8.2 cm (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Map of the world

This tablet contains both a cuneiform inscription and a unique map of the Mesopotamian world. Babylon is shown in the center (the rectangle in the top half of the circle), and Assyria, Elam, and other places are also named.

The central area is ringed by a circular waterway labelled “Salt-Sea.” The outer rim of the sea is surrounded by what were probably originally eight regions, each indicated by a triangle, labelled “Region” or “Island,” and marked with the distance in between. The cuneiform text describes these regions, and it seems that strange and mythical beasts as well as great heroes lived there, although the text is far from complete. The regions are shown as triangles since that was how it was visualized that they first would look when approached by water.

The map is sometimes taken as a serious example of ancient geography, but although the places are shown in their approximately correct positions, the real purpose of the map is to explain the Babylonian view of the mythological world.

Observations of Venus

Thanks to Assyrian records, the chronology of Mesopotamia is relatively clear back to around 1200 B.C.E. However, before this time dating is less certain.

Cuneiform tablet with observations of Venus, Neo-Assyrian, 7th century B.C.E., from Nineveh, northern Iraq, clay, 17.14 x 9.20 x 2.22 cm (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Cuneiform tablet with observations of Venus, Neo-Assyrian, 7th century B.C.E., from Nineveh, northern Iraq, clay, 17.14 x 9.20 x 2.22 cm (© Trustees of the British Museum)

This tablet is one of the most important (and controversial) cuneiform tablets for reconstructing Mesopotamian chronology before around 1400 B.C.E.

The text of the tablet is a copy, made at Nineveh in the seventh century B.C.E., of observations of the planet Venus made in the reign of Ammisaduqa, king of Babylon, about 1000 years earlier. Modern astronomers have used the details of the observations in an attempt to calculate the dates of Ammisaduqa. Ideally this process would also allow us to date the Babylonian rulers of the early second and late third millennium B.C.E. Unfortunately, however, there is much uncertainty in the dating because the records are so inconsistent. This has led to different chronologies being adopted with some scholars favoring a “high” chronology while others adopt a “middle” or “low” range of dates. There are good arguments for each of these.

Scribes

Literacy was not widespread in Mesopotamia. Scribes, nearly always men, had to undergo training, and having successfully completed a curriculum became entitled to call themselves dubsar, which means “scribe.” They became members of a privileged élite who, like scribes in ancient Egypt, might look with contempt upon their fellow citizens.

Understanding of life in Babylonian schools is based on a group of Sumerian texts of the Old Babylonian period. These texts became part of the curriculum and were still being copied a thousand years later. Schooling began at an early age in the é-dubba, the “tablet house.” Although the house had a headmaster, his assistant, and a clerk, much of the initial instruction and discipline seems to have been in the hands of an elder student—the scholar’s “big brother.” All these had to be flattered or bribed with gifts from time to time to avoid a beating.

Apart from mathematics, the Babylonian scribal education concentrated on learning to write Sumerian and Akkadian using cuneiform and on learning the conventions for writing letters, contracts, and accounts. Scribes were under the patronage of the Sumerian goddess Nisaba. In later times her place was taken by the god Nabu, whose symbol was the stylus (a cut reed used to make signs in damp clay).

Deciphering cuneiform

The decipherment of cuneiform began in the eighteenth century as European scholars searched for proof of the places and events recorded in the Bible. Travelers, antiquaries, and some of the earliest archaeologists visited the ancient Near East where they uncovered great cities such as Nineveh. They brought back a range of artifacts, including thousands of clay tablets covered in cuneiform.

Scholars began the incredibly difficult job of trying to decipher these strange signs representing languages no-one had heard for thousands of years. Gradually the cuneiform signs representing these different languages were deciphered thanks to the work of a number of dedicated people.

Confirmation that they had succeeded came in 1857. The Royal Asiatic Society sent copies of a newly found clay record of the military and hunting achievements of King Tiglath-pileser I to four scholars: Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Edward Hincks, Julius Oppert, and William H. Fox Talbot. They each worked independently and returned translations that broadly agreed with each other.

This was accepted as proof that cuneiform had been successfully deciphered, but there are still elements that we don’t completely understand and the study continues. What we have been able to read, however, has opened up the ancient world of Mesopotamia. It has not only revealed information about trade, building, and government, but also great works of literature, history, and everyday life in the region.

© Trustees of the British Museum


Additional resources

Read a chapter in our textbook, Reframing Art History, about rethinking how we approach the art of the Ancient Near East.

I.L. Finkel, “A join to the Map of the World: a notable discovery,” British Museum Magazine: 5 (Winter 1995), p. 26–27.

W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns, 1998).

I.L. Finkel, Gilgamesh: the Hero King (London, The British Museum Press, 1998).

M. Roaf, “Observations of Venus,” in The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (New York, 1990).

Cite this page

Cite this page as: The British Museum, “Cuneiform, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, February 28, 2017, accessed April 9, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/cuneiform/.

Cuneiform Tablets

Cuneiform Tablets

These records tell us a great deal about the ancient world, with topics ranging from receipts to school assignments.

Backstory

Cuneiform tablets are among the most plentiful types of ancient artifacts in the world: over half a million are thought to be held in museum collections, and thousands, or perhaps millions, more have yet to be excavated. These artifacts are a rich part of global heritage, allowing researchers to learn vital information about the societies that produced them. Such information is even more valuable when objects are properly excavated, with documented findspots that allow experts to analyze not just their content, but their physical and cultural context.

With the escalation of conflict in the Middle East, opportunities for the looting and illegal sale of objects like these have greatly increased. Private dealers, as well as militant groups like ISIS, are benefitting from the lack of security in countries like Iraq, where it is relatively easy to find and remove archaeologically-significant objects and sell them on the black market.

However, such sales are not possible without buyers to drive demand. A prominent example of this is the recent case brought against the Green family, the owners of the Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby chain of retail stores. In 2010 and 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Control intercepted several packages addressed to the company. They were marked as “tile samples” and documented as coming from Turkey, but they actually contained over 5,500 cuneiform tablets and bricks, clay bullae, and cylinder seals thought to be from Iraq. The Green family—noted collectors of objects associated with the Biblical Middle East—had paid $1.6 million to a private dealer in exchange for the shipments. They agreed to forfeit the objects and pay a fine of $3 million to the Department of Justice.

The looting and illegal sale of important historical artifacts is detrimental to global cultural heritage for many reasons: it impedes research, divorces objects from their historical context, and robs at-risk communities of their rightful cultural property. The case of Hobby Lobby highlights the importance of policing such trafficking not just in the places where artifacts are found, but also in the places where they are collected and purchased.

Backstory by Dr. Naraelle Hohensee


Additional resources:

Alan Feuer, “Hobby Lobby Agrees to Forfeit 5,500 Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq,” The New York Times, July 5, 2017

U.S. Attorney’s Office, “United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby,” July 5, 2017

Cite this page

Cite this page as: UCLA Library, “Cuneiform Tablets,” in Smarthistory, January 1, 2016, accessed April 10, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/cuneiform-tablets/.

Mesopotamian Deities

about the site, deities a-z, bibliography

The Mesopotamian literary corpus is one of the oldest literatures in the world. It is infused with the divine, because religion played a crucial part in the way Mesopotamians expressed their thoughts about human life. Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, with a pantheon consisting of hundreds if not thousands of gods of varying importance. This website offers information about the fifty most important gods and goddesses and provides starting points for further research.

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History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic Copyright © by Dr. Amy Marshman; Dr. Jeanette Nicewinter; and Dr. Paula Winn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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