Artists Employ a Composite View of the Human Body, but Show It As Regular in Appearance and in a Variety of Poses and Settings
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Venus of Willendorf that they may be emblems of security and success, fertility icons, representations of a Great Goddess or Mother Goddess or various local goddesses. The female figures, as part of Upper Palaeolithic portable art, appear to have no practical use in the context of subsistence. They are mostly discovered in settlement contexts, both in open-air sites and caves; burial contexts are much more rare. Chauvet Cave paintings The Chauvet Cave is a cave in southern France that contains the earliest known cave paintings, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. Discovered in 1994, it is considered one of the most significant prehistoric art sites. Hundreds of animal paintings have been catalogued, depicting at least 13 different species, including those which have rarely or never been found in other ice age paintings. Rather than depicting only the familiar animals of the hunt that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, i.e. horses, cattle, reindeer, etc., the walls of the Chauvet Cave are covered with predatory animals: lions, panthers, bears, owls, rhinos and hyenas. Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures. T his combination of subjects has led experts in pre-historic art and cultures to believe that there was likely a ritual, shamanic, or magical aspect to these paintings. There is also paintings of magic mushrooms which suggests that it must have been a shamanic culture. Altamira Cave paintings Its special relevance comes from the fact it was the first cave in which prehistoric cave paintings were discovered, leading to a controversy during the late 19th century because many people did not believe prehistoric man had the intellectual capacity to produce any kind of artistic expression. Deer Hunt Çatal Höyük, Turkey Artists employ a composite view of the human body, but show it as regular in appearance and in a variety of poses and settings. Humans are shown dominating animals. The paintings are done on a prepared wall surface. It shows the hunters relative sizes compared to their prey. Female head (possibly Inanna) from Uruk (modern Warka) Iraq ca. 3,200-3,000 B.C.E. Inanna is the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare. It is a fragment of a white marble statue which is an extraordinary achievement at an early date. It is a treasure in the Iraq Museum and it disappeared in the Iraq 2003. It has drilled holes to attach to a body and a groove on the head to attach a gold wig. There was stoned that filled in the eyebrows and eyes. Statuettes of worhippers from Eshnunna (modern Tell Asmar) Iraq ca. 2,700 B.C.E. Another group of Sumerian votive statuettes comes from the Temple of Ishtar at Mari.Of particular interest is the figure of Urnanshe depicted beardless but with straight hair to his waist, suggesting he was a eunuch. Statuettes show standing men and women of varying size with large eyes and tiny hands clasped in a gesture of prayer or holding a small beaker. Another statuette shows the seated figure of the court singer Urnanshe in prayer. Even then, worship was so common and revered that artists took time to carve them into stone ʹ this will be seen again and again throughout art in history after this Bull-headed lyre from Tomb 789, Royal Cemetery Ur (modern Tell Muqayyar) Depending on various definitions, they could be classed as lyres rather than harps. The most famous is the bull- headed harp, held in Baghdad. The second Iraqi War led to the destruction of the bull-head lyre [1], and attempts are being made to play a replica of it as part of a touring orchestra. From the earliest times, the bull was lunar in Mesopotamia (its horns representing the crescent moon). The lyre is so famous that the lyre is pictured in other art. Ram in a thicketfrom Tomb 789, Royal Cemetery Ur (modern Tell Muqayyar) Iraq ca. 2,600 B.C.E. In one story in the book of Genesis the patriarch Abraham finds a ram stuck in a thicket and sacrifices it rather than his own son. Whether the legend told in the Old Testament is related somehow to that of the Mesopotamian symbol is anybody's guess. Cylinder seal from the tomb of Pu-abi Royal Cemetery Ur modern Tell Muqayyar) Iraq This cylinder seal was discovered in the 'Queen's Grave' in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. It is engraved with a banquet scene. It has been suggested that this indicates that the owner was female, while a man's seal would have been engraved with a combat scene. Indeed, the cuneiform inscription on this seal reads 'Pu-abi nin'. The Sumerian word 'nin' can be translated as either 'lady' or 'queen'. It is possible that Pu-abi (previously read as Shub-ad) may have been a high priestess in the service of the moon god, Nanna, patron of Ur. The seal is made from lapis lazuli, which would have come from Afghanistan. This not only shows the extensive trade routes that existed at this time, but also how important Pu-abi was, owning an object made of such an exotic material. Lamassu (winged human headed bull) from the citadel of Sargon II, Dar Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad) Iraq ca. 720-705 B.C.E. ʹ[has writing on it!] Human-headed winged bull-gods or Lamassu were placed in doorways of Assyrian king's thronerooms as symbols of power and protection. This Lamassu has five legs, so that if viewed from either front or side it will always have the correct number. In the reign of Sennacherib, Lamassu with four legs replaced their predecessors with five legs. Ashurnasirpal's palace is described in the so-called Standard Inscription that ran across the surface of most of the reliefs: "I built thereon [a palace with] halls of cedar, cypress, juniper, boxwood, teak, terebinth, and tamarisk[?] as my royal dwelling and for the enduring leisure life of my lordship." The inscription continues: "Beasts of the mountains and the seas, which I had fashioned out of white limestone and alabaster, I had set up in its gates. I made it [the palace] fittingly imposing." Assyrian archers pursuing enemies from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Kalhu (modern Nimrud) Assyrian palaces were adnored with extensive series of narrative reliefs exalting the king and recounting his great deeds.this This one depicts Assyrian Rchers driving the enemy into the euprhrates river Ishtar Gate (restored) Dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar,( Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex.[1] In the Babylonian pantheon, she "was the divine personification of the planet Venus".[2]) the Gate was constructed of blue glazed tiles with alternating rows of bas-relief sirrush (dragons) and aurochs. Originally the gate, being part of the Walls of Babylon, was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the world until, in the 6th century AD, it was replaced with the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The aurochs or urus (Bos primigenius), the ancestor of domestic cattle, was a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct; it survived in Europe until 1627. Aurochs appear in prehistoric cave paintings, Julius Caesar's The Gallic War and as the national symbol of many European countries, states and cities such as Alba-Iulia, Kaunas, Romania, Moldavia, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Uri. Domestication of the aurochs began in the southern Caucasus and northern Mesopotamia from about the 6th millennium BC, while genetic evidence suggests that aurochs were independently domesticated in northern Africa and in India.[15] Domesticated cattle and aurochs are so different in size that they have been regarded as separate species.[13] Menkaure and Khamerenebty from Gizeh, Egypt The artist chose to use slate carved straight off of a massive block. The reason is that his goal was to create a sculpture that would endure the test of time since the ka (the soul) returned to the statue after its body was decomposed. The statue is of a married couple, Menkaure and Khamerenebty. Menkaure's pose is canonical, that is, rigidly frontal with his arms hanging straight down tightly and close to his well-built body. His fists are clenched and his thumbs are forward. His leg is extended to the front, but there are no signs of contraposto; there is no shift in the angle of his hips. His wife is standing in a similar fashion, but her hands gently rest upon the body of her husband. The statue exhibits with satisfying clarity the Egyptian adherence to a system or "canon" of proportions and, in its strictly frontal viewpoint, the rigid poses of the figures, an unwavering conformity to rules and established conventions which are interpreted both as manifesting the nature of the pharaoh's authority over his subjects and by extension as embodying the highly regulated, hierarchical structure of Ancient Egyptian society. 1. DISCOVERY The statue of the Pharaoh Menkaure (Mycerinus) and his Queen in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, carved out of slate and dating to 2548-2530 BCE, is an example of Old Kingdom 4th Dynasty royal sculpture. The statue, which stands about 4 feet 8 inches high, was found in a hole dug earlier by treasure-hunters below the floor of a room in the Valley Temple of the pyramid of Menkaure at Giza during excavations undertaken by the Harvard University and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston expedition under the direction of the archaeologist George Reisner in 1908-10. On January 18, 1910, digging revealed the heads of the statue; the following day the pair was completely unearthed [see George Reisner, 1931 in the BIBLIOGRAPHY].