An Abrupt End to a 3,500-Year Story

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Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Saturday 18, February 2017 Page: 28,29 Area: 993 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 460498 Daily Ad data: page rate £46,000.00, scc rate £214.00 Phone: 020 7931 2000 Keyword: Thames & Hudson

An abrupt end to a 3,500-year story

Some of the glorious art in this study of Mesopotamia was destroyed by Isil as it was being written. By Andrew Robinson eastern Turkey and the Iraq-Iran MESOPOTAMIA: border is, of course, regarded ANCIENT ART AND during the Iraq war. She therefore by the West as the “cradle of ARCHITECTURE writes with inside knowledge of civilisation”. Yet its art is a lot by Zainab Bahrani both ancient Mesopotamia and less familiar to most Europeans the present-day threat to that than, say, the art of ancient Egypt, 376PP, THAMES & heritage. Greece and Rome. “It is more HUDSON, £45 Her gloriously illustrated important now than ever before,” large-format history begins with concludes Bahrani, “to sustain… the city of Uruk in the mid- historical knowledge of this fourth millennium BC, which fascinating past, so that future created the world’s first writing, generations may not forget it, or ome of the ancient known since 1818 as cuneiform: imagine that there never was such cities and works the wedge-shaped script used an ancient world.” of art that we have throughout Mesopotamia for Her reading of ancient history covered in this book three millennia, inscribed on does offer some hope that were destroyed everything from clay tablets Mesopotamian art might be ‘S to monumental statues. even while the resilient enough to survive some book was being written.” This Then, in chronological order, centuries of neglect. Unlike the bleak sentence comes from the Bahrani guides the reader Hellenistic-style work to be found through 3,500 years, though in the region during the centuries final paragraph of Mesopotamia: regrettably without providing after Alexander, the Islamic art that Ancient Art and Architecture. It an overall chronology – such appears next to a photograph are the scholarly uncertainties over dating in this field. She of a life-size, second century later flourished in Mesopotamia describes the visual cultures AD marble statue of a Parthian grew out of more ancient traditions of the Sumerians, Akkadians, king from Hatra in Iraq with his and was executed by indigenous Babylonians, Assyrians and right hand raised in reverence, artists and architects. The Great Achaemenid Persians, and destroyed in 2015 during the Mosque of Damascus, for instance, the Hellenistic period after attack on the Mosul Museum by built in AD 706 – one of the oldest the capture of Babylon in Isil. The book’s author, Baghdad- and most beautiful mosques in 331 BC by Alexander the born Zainab Bahrani, a former Islam – stands on the site of what curator of Near Eastern antiquities Great that gave us the Greek at New York’s Metropolitan name Mesopotamia, “the Museum, Slade professor in the land between two rivers” was once a Christian church, fine arts at Oxford University in (Tigris and Euphrates) – in before that a Roman temple of 2010-11 and currently professor addition to many lesser- Jupiter and before that, in the of art history and archaeology at known cultures – and ends second millennium BC, a site Columbia University in New York, at the rise of Islam in the seventh sacred to a Mesopotamian storm was appointed a senior adviser to century AD. and rain god, Hadad. The mosque Iraq’s Ministry of Culture in 2004, This region of modern Iraq draws on pre-Islamic architecture and Kuwait, eastern Syria, south- kdh

Reproduced by Gorkana under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines), FT (Financial Times/ft.com) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner. All FT content is copyright The Financial Times Ltd. Article Page 1 of 4 382453637 - EMMFRA - A23236-1 - 122464672 Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Saturday 18, February 2017 Page: 28,29 Area: 993 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 460498 Daily Ad data: page rate £46,000.00, scc rate £214.00 Phone: 020 7931 2000 Keyword: Thames & Hudson

and chasing later found in Westerners think of and decorative elements, taking its Islamic-era metallurgy, cue from the cultural continuity are first observed among it as the ‘cradle of so characteristic of ancient the Sumerians. civilisation’, but we Mesopotamia. Such funerary objects were designed to be buried know little of its art hereas most historians and invisible to human and archaeologists of spectators. By contrast, most W of the art here was meant to ancient Mesopotamia ask what its art can tell us about be viewed, whether by kings society, politics, religion or trade, and courtiers or all and Bahrani deliberately differs. Her sundry. Famous examples focus is on art for art’s sake. include the giant Assyrian Ancient Mesopotamian human human-headed, winged figures certainly inspired the bulls and lions from the sculptors Henry Moore and palace of Ashurnasirpal Alberto Giacometti, she notes; and II at Nimrud; the Ishtar in 1936, ancient Near Eastern art Gate of Nebuchadnezzar was cited as an influence on II at Babylon decorated abstract expressionism in the with bulls and dragons opening exhibition of New York’s in polychrome terracotta Museum of Modern Art, “Cubism bricks; and the massive and Abstract Art”. Achaemenid relief Not coincidentally, a few celebrating Darius I carved into years before this exhibition, a high cliff at Bisotun in the Zagros Mountains that divide Mesopotamia from the Iranian probably the most astonishing plateau, alongside a trilingual archaeological discovery ever inscription in Babylonian, Elamite made in Mesopotamia had been and Old Persian cuneiform, which excavated between 1928 and 1934: provided the key to deciphering the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Sixteen that last, long-forgotten script in Sumerian tombs constructed the mid-19th century. around 2500-2400 BC were found These, and scores of other filled with finely made objects of works, are analysed by Bahrani precious materials, such as lapis in great detail that is revealing if lazuli from Afghanistan, along occasionally perplexing, when she draws our attention to with numerous sacrificed human details that we cannot see in the attendants dressed in ample illustrations, such as the invisible jewellery, including exquisitely “Israelite prisoners” and “horses” drilled carnelian bead necklaces in an Assyrian relief at Lachish. imported from as far afield as the Overall, though, the book will Indus Valley. undoubtedly persuade even a The most celebrated of these sceptical reader – if not, alas, an objects are reproduced in this Isil fanatic – of the artistic allure book: for example, a gold, lapis of ancient Mesopotamia. lazuli and carnelian headdress of Queen Puabi, a musical lyre with Andrew Robinson is author of The a lapis-and-gold bull’s head, and Indus: Lost Civilisations (Reaktion). an inlaid box known as the royal To order a copy of Mesopotamia: Art standard of Ur vividly depicting and Architecture from the Telegraph a royal banquet. Bahrani notes for £40, call 0844 871 1515 that the techniques of the goldsmith, such as repoussé and filigree, hammering

Reproduced by Gorkana under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines), FT (Financial Times/ft.com) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner. All FT content is copyright The Financial Times Ltd. Article Page 2 of 4 382453637 - EMMFRA - A23236-1 - 122464672 Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Saturday 18, February 2017 Page: 28,29 Area: 993 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 460498 Daily Ad data: page rate £46,000.00, scc rate £214.00 Phone: 020 7931 2000 Keyword: Thames & Hudson BRITISH MUSEUM; GETTY IMAGES; ALAMY IMAGES; GETTY BRITISH MUSEUM;

Reproduced by Gorkana under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines), FT (Financial Times/ft.com) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner. All FT content is copyright The Financial Times Ltd. Article Page 3 of 4 382453637 - EMMFRA - A23236-1 - 122464672 Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review} Edition: Country: UK Date: Saturday 18, February 2017 Page: 28,29 Area: 993 sq. cm Circulation: ABC 460498 Daily Ad data: page rate £46,000.00, scc rate £214.00 Phone: 020 7931 2000 Keyword: Thames & Hudson

Visual feast: the Sumerian Royal Standard of Ur (2550-2400BC), above; top left, an 1850s print imagining the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883- 859BC) at Nimrud; below right, detail from a relief of the lion hunt of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (ruled 668- 627BC)