Wood was commonly used for a wide range of purposes, known from textual references, artistic representations, and the few charred fragments of wooden artifacts that have survived. Wooden objects, vehicles, and furniture, now vanished, have also been reconstructed from their surviving metal fittings and inlaid decoration of colored stone, ivory, shell, and other materials, and from the discolorations left by them in the soil: The Royal Cemetery at Ur and the sacked palaces of Nimrud have been particularly fertile sources of such remains. Texts provide some information on what types of wood were used for various purposes, although the Sumerian or Akkadian names cannot always be identified with known woods; the rare wooden artifacts can sometimes, although not always, be identified to genus (see tables 9.1 and 9.2).
Although Babylonia was unforested, it grew both date palms and a range of scrubby trees and bushes such as poplar and tamarisk, which answered many of the needs of the region's inhabitants for fuel, construction, tools, and furniture. Trees were planted and managed, and by the time of Hammurabi severe penalties awaited those who felled timber without authorization. Trees were more abundant in the north, with forests in some parts such as the Jazireh, and massive timbers for building temples and palaces could be obtained from neighboring regions such as the Zagros and the mountains of Lebanon and the Taurus. "Cedar Mountain" (the Amanus Mountains) was the chief source of cedar as well as yielding other valuable timbers such as pine, cypress, fir, and juniper, and control of this region was of great concern to Mesopotamian leaders from early times. Many texts decribe the felling of trees here and their transport to and down the rivers, and a relief in the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin shows the cedar trunks being transported on boats or towed behind them. Timber such as sissoo, ebony, bamboo, and teak were also imported from more distant suppliers—Magan, the Indus region, and Africa. The high value placed on timber can be seen in wills where roof beams, doors, and door frames were specifically mentioned among the deceased's bequests.
Wood was used for handles and many tools and weapons such as spears and hoes, with or without a stone or metal head. Texts from Mari refer to food served in bowls of sissoo wood and eaten with small wooden bowls and spoons. Wooden trays were used for carrying food from the kitchen; these might have an integral stand of vertical or diagonal struts. Stools represented on the "Standard of Ur" (see photo p. 73), around 2600 b. c.e., had legs and feet shaped like bulls' legs and hooves. Chairs with backs first appeared in art in the ED period; references in later-third-millennium texts show that many types of wood were used for the frame, while the seats might be upholstered with leather. Stools, chairs, and tables might have a framework of wood, supported by struts, or be woven of withies or reeds. Beds were probably uncommon until the later third millennium: Their frames were of wood, sometimes decorated, supporting a bed surface of interwoven rope.
Wooden objects from the Royal Cemetery at Ur included a storage chest, gaming boards, and lyres, inlaid with mosaic designs in shell, lapis lazuli, and red stone. The lyres' sounding boxes were adorned with bovine heads in gold and lapis lazuli, and the uprights of one from the "Great Death Pit" were clad in alternating bands of mosaic and gold. A sledge from Puabi's tomb in the cemetery was decorated with mosaic inlay and lions' heads in gold with manes of lapis lazuli and shell. Sledges, warcarts, and wagons are known from fourth - and third-millennium art, and the remains of one such wagon were uncovered in an ED grave at Kish: It had a wooden platform surrounded by rails and four solid wooden wheels. These were made of three pieces clamped together, with copper nails set in the rim to make them more durable. Terra-cotta models of wheels show that such protection was common, although in neighboring Elam and in early-second-millennium Assyria tires made from strips of metal were used. Spoked wheels came into use in the early second millennium, and an improved version with a metal nave into which the spokes fitted was devised in Assyria in the early first millennium for use on chariots.
References in the Amarna Letters show that luxury furniture was given as gifts between kings, such as the ebony beds, tables, and chairs overlaid with gold sent by the pharaoh to Mesopotamian monarchs. Fine furniture was also a desirable commodity plundered by Assyrian armies from the areas they invaded, such as the Levant and Urartu. The finds from Nimrud (Kalhu) provide examples of the stools, chairs, and tables shown in first-millennium Assyrian reliefs. The finest pieces were often partially sheathed in bronze or gold and had decorations of shell, ivory, metal, and other materials. Some tables had elegant legs with lions' feet, and in some cases the legs were entirely of ivory.
Kings and queens took their ease on stools and thrones once decorated with ivory panels, their feet supported by footstools. Bronze hinges from Nimrud may support the idea that the cross-legged tables and stools shown in many reliefs of military camps and hunting expeditions were portable folding furniture. The wells at Nimrud yielded a number of wooden objects, including pulley wheels of mulberry wood, several derricks, and a number of hinged writing tablets of walnut.
Stone
Stone, used to make tools from the earliest times, served many purposes in Mesopotamia, although in the south, where stone was rare, tools were often made of wood or clay instead. Assyria had sandstone and limestone, and an outcrop of limestone at Ummayyad to the west of the lower Euphrates was probably exploited by the people of Babylonia. Assyria also had local supplies of alabaster in the upper Khabur region and flint along the Balikh and upper Euphrates. The Zagros foothills yielded lava, quartzite occurred in large amounts in the Hamrin, and gypsum was available in the Jebel Bishri. Some stone reached Babylonia as rocks carried down by the rivers: The quartzite, and perhaps the flint, used for tools at Tell 'Oueili may have been transported in this way. Obsidian could be obtained from Anatolia, and basalt, diorite, granite, haematite, serpentine, and jasper were also imported from neighboring areas. Other decorative stones such as carnelian, steatite, agate, and lapis lazuli came from more distant Iranian, Afghan, or Indian sources.
Cutting tools such as sickle blades, arrowheads, chisels, and hoe heads were originally made of chipped flint, chert, or quartzite, and these materials were still in use in the first millennium as a cheaper substitute for metal; other utilitarian objects like netsinkers, slingshots, and griddles for cooking were also made of stone. Grindstones and pestles could be made of lava, basalt, or coarse limestone. Open molds for casting metal tools and weapons such as axes and spearheads were cut into blocks of sandstone: Often several faces of the block would each have a mold for a different object. Stone was also cut and polished to make weights, often in the shape of ducks (see photo p. 132), and was among the materials used for making calibrated measuring bars and coffins. Obsidian was prized in early times for making sharp blades and a variety of attractive objects, including mirrors, but in historical times it was made into jewelry, vessels, and seals. It was so highly valued that some obsidian vessels were ornamented with gold and given as gifts between royalty.
Attractive stones were used in making jewelry, worn by people and divine images and an important form of wealth, given in dowries, listed in wills, and exchanged as gifts between rulers. Beads and other ornaments, such as pendants, bracelets, and rings, as well as amulets, were made from a variety of stones, such as rock crystal, chalcedony, haematite, agate, and lapis lazuli; some of these were manufactured locally; others, such as the long barrel beads and "etched" beads of Meluhhan carnelian were imported ready-made. Beads were strung as necklaces, armlets, headdresses, and anklets, and were also sewn onto clothing. Fine stone was also set into ornaments made of metal such as bracelets and pendants: For example the gold ribbon from one of the royal Assyrian tombs at Nimrud was set with tigereye agate discs. Inlays of stone such as obsidian and lapis lazuli were added to statues, using bitumen to hold them in place. Pieces of attractive stone were also employed as architectural decoration: The walls of many temples were embellished with eight-petaled rosettes made of colored stone.
Stone was quarried and shaped using pounders and grinders of very hard stone such as dolerite, and in the first millennium, iron saws, although the softer stones such as limestone and sandstone could be extracted with picks of copper, bronze, or iron. Hammers and chisels were used to carve the stone into the required shape and execute details such as relief carving, while the finer details and inscriptions were drilled using an abrasive such as sand and bow drills with bits of hard stone: These were also used to perforate beads. Objects were then polished with sandstone or quartzite rubbers and sand. Stones padded with bitumen acted as a vice to hold objects being worked on. A stoneworking workshop was uncovered at Nimrud in the Review Palace: Among the equipment found here was a doubled-handled iron frame-saw, 1.73 meters long, used for cutting stone. At the time the palace was sacked, a broken alabaster statue was being repaired here with dowels.
Sculpture and Art in Stone. Alabaster, obsidian, sandstone, gypsum, and chlorite were among the stones used for making bowls and jars, which were often dedicated as royal votive offerings. From the city of Uruk in the Uruk period come several fine vessels decorated with relief carving, including the Warka vase, an alabaster vessel around a meter high (see photo p. 69), and a gypsum trough carved with a relief design of sheep and a reed hut. Other vessels were more elaborately decorated, with plastic designs, including a sandstone ewer with a solid figure of a lion pacing alongside the spout as well as a lion attacking a bull around the body of the vessel, their heads standing out from it. Sculptures of animals in the round are also known from this period: Some seem to have supported offering stands, but there is also a powerful sculptured limestone figure of a creature that is part man, part lion.
Probably the finest piece from this period is the female mask found at Uruk, perhaps a depiction of Inanna herself. The head is of marble and must originally have had eyes of shell with lapis lazuli pupils and eyebrows and gold-inlaid hair. While this figure is naturalistic, the period has also produced a huge number of extremely schematic "eye-idols," stone or clay votive plaques with a flat body, sometimes engraved with a zigzag to represent arms, and a short neck surmounted by a pair of large eyes.
Votive figurines became one of the main genres of sculpture (see photo p. 71). An early collection of rather stylized figures was found in an ED II temple at Eshnunna. Ten are worshippers; the other two, which are considerably larger, represent the god and his wife. Carved of gypsum, their eyes are inlaid with shell and lapis or black limestone, and bitumen colors their beards and hair. A charming statue of a woman was found in a soldier's grave of the ED III period at Ur. Carved of limestone, her eyes and hairline are inlaid with bitumen. She wears a layered woolen dress that leaves her shoulders bare, and her hands are clasped on her chest in an attitude of reverence. Later sculptures are often naturalistic, including both human figures and animals. Some of the finest were the seated or standing votive diorite figures of King Gudea of Lagash (2141-2122 B. C.E.): portraits showing a man of reflective serenity but also strength (see photo p. 80). In contrast the gypsum statues dedicated in small domestic and urban
Shrines were generally simple and might be quite crudely modeled, although they might also have a certain charm, like the statue of a man and woman holding hands that was found beneath the Inanna shrine at Nippur.
Stele, known as the Law Code, of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, in the eighteenth century, B. C.E. The stele is of black diorite and was carved with the figure of Hammurabi standing before the seated sun god, Shamash, god of justice. (Zev Radovan/Land of the Bible Picture Archive)
By the second millennium, human figures were being depicted with every detail of their clothing, hair, and other features painstakingly carved. This attention to detail was still to be seen in the stiff, stylized statues of Assyrian kings and in the gigantic figures (lamassu) guarding the first-millennium palaces of Assyria—lions, bulls, and benevolent genies, and winged human-headed bulls shown with five legs so that they looked balanced from both the front and the side (see photo p. 28). These figures are carved partially in the round, but they are engaged, still a part of the architectural block to which they belong, recalling the figures of more than two millennia earlier that were shown in relief with heads in the round.
Narrative relief carvings began in the Uruk period with a basalt boulder on which a king is shown hunting lions with spear and bow. ED-period limestone plaques depict royal warfare and the victory feast, or pious construction, such as the plaque of Ur-Nanshe of Lagash (ca. 2494-2465), where he is shown in the presence of his family, carrying the first basket of soil. These plaques were presumably attached to walls. The later stele of Naram-Sin (2254-2218) (see photo p. 186) is a unified composition, concentrating on a single dramatic moment of military victory rather than being split into narrative scenes. A stele of the Ur III monarch Ur-Nammu (2112-2095) emphasizes the religious role of the king, and the relief carved on the top of Hammurabi's law-code stele is in a similar vein, depicting the king before the divine judge Shamash, affirming the god's favor and his own commitment to justice. Kings feature as donors on the later kudurrus (land-grant records), particularly numerous in the Kassite period; the gods are represented by their symbols. The contemporary Assyrian kings appear on altars and inscribed obelisks, but also in scenes of warfare, a theme elaborated in the beautifully carved and detailed reliefs that adorn the walls of the palaces of later Assyrian kings. The aftermath of war is also vividly depicted, with processions of the defeated wending their weary way into exile, subject envoys bringing tribute, and Assyrian kings taking their ease. A few show other remarkable achievements, including the quarrying and transporting of the enormous statues that guarded the palaces. The scenes of Ashurbanipal hunting lions from his palace at Nineveh are a masterpiece, full of drama, vigor, and movement, the lions
A second-millennium cylinder seal and its modern impression. The seal bore a text naming its owner, Taribum, the son of Etel-pi-Ishtar, the servant of Shamash the sun god, and a design, in this case probably a depiction of Taribum’s personal deity. (Zev Radovan/Land of the Bible Picture Archive)
Closely observed and feelingly depicted. In one scene a lioness, paralyzed by an arrow, roars her dying defiance, while a lion hurls himself upon the king's chariot. In another, the king is tackling a wounded lion on foot: As the lion rears on its hind legs, face-to-face with the king, he catches it by the throat and delivers the coup de grace with his sword (see photo p. 106).
Seals. Seal cutting was a specialist craft, distinct from other forms of stoneworking. Designs were usually carved into the surface of seals, so they made an impression on clay in which the design was raised and the background depressed, but occasionally seals have the background cut away leaving the design in relief. The flat surface of stamp seals was relatively easy to carve, but the curved surface of cylinder seals required considerable skill both in layout and in execution. A text of the Achaemenid period stated that a seal cutter served an apprenticeship of four or more years, and a similar period must have been required to attain the level of craftsmanship shown by Mesopotamian seal cutters. The details of the designs and particularly of the
Inscriptions are so small that they seem to demand that seal cutters employed magnifying glasses, and indeed a polished rock crystal disc with one flat and one convex face found at Nimrud might have been a magnifying lens. Attractive and colorful materials were favored for seals: They varied through time, with steatite, serpentine, and limestone used in the earlier third millennium, lapis employed in some quantity from the mid-third millennium, and jasper, banded agate, and rock crystal coming into fashion from Akkadian times. Haematite was the preferred medium in the earlier second millennium. Carnelian and chalcedony were also used in later times, as was glass.
The art on seals ranges wide in its themes. Among Uruk-period examples are seals depicting a king surveying bound prisoners, people bearing offerings to the temple, contests between bulls and lions, and real and mythical beasts. The skill in the design lay in filling the surface but creating a design that would be equally satisfactory if only a portion of the design was rolled out or if the design was rolled out to a considerable length so that it began to repeat. The "Brocade style" of the ED period fulfilled this by cramming the cylinder surface with small repeated motifs, such as a line of goats surrounded by stars, fishes, rosettes, or geometric figures. Contests between animals or between man and beast similarly filled the space and continued smoothly throughout the seal impression. The modeling on the seals improved, producing figures that were more three-dimensional. Akkadian seals became less cluttered and increasingly emphasized narrative themes, with the gods frequently shown. Thereafter seal design declined until revived in the later second millennium by the Assyrians, who produced a wealth of vivacious naturalistic and narrative scenes, often featuring animals.
Decorative Materials
Shell. The shells worked by Mesopotamian craftsmen came from all the seas to which they had access and included cockles from the Mediterranean, cowries and mother-of-pearl from Dilmun, chank and Lambis from the Indian Ocean, and Tridacna (giant clam) from the Indian Ocean or the Red Sea. For example, under the Mitanni the provincial town of Nuzi, near the Zagros foothills in northeastern Mesopotamia, used shells from the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. Tortoiseshell and ostrich eggshell were also used. Flint microborers and bladelets for working mother-of-pearl were found in a workshop at Mari. Shell and mother-of-pearl were used for decorative inlays and for small objects, including unmodified cockleshells used as containers for cosmetics. Simple cowrie-shell beads were made by slicing off the back to make them flat and perforating them longitudinally. Small figurines and flat shapes were cut from shell. For instance bovids decorated with circle and dot motifs were popular in the central Euphrates region in the later third millennium. Some of the shell and mother-of-pearl plaques and figures were intended as inlays for architecture or furniture, including an ED military scene of shell figures decorating the wall of the Ishtar temple at Mari and many of the inlays on objects from the Royal Cemetery at Ur; others were artifacts in their own right, perhaps with some religious significance. A set of eighteen deco-
Rated discs of Lambis shell attached to bronze pins found at Nimrud may have decorated a horse harness. Larger shells were made into vessels: Often they were cut open to make lamps. A beautiful cup from the Royal Cemetery at Ur was made of an ostrich eggshell to which had been added a pedestal, neck and mouth of bitumen inlaid with patterns in mother-of-pearl. Giant clamshells were made into containers, perhaps for cosmetics; examples from Nimrud were elaborately decorated, the hinge carved into a head and wings engraved over the back.
Ivory. Until the early first millennium b. c.e., when it was hunted to extinction, a small species known as the Syrian elephant roamed the northern Levant and provided ivory as well as sport for the elite of the Near East. Ivory was also imported during the third millennium from the Indus civilization and later reached Mesopotamia from Africa, via Egypt, and India. The canines and lower incisors of Egyptian, Syrian, and southern Palestinian hippopotamuses also yielded ivory.
Ivory was used for a variety of small objects like combs, jewelry, plaques, and figurines, as well as decoration on furniture and divine statues. Small ivories, probably mostly imports from the Levant, are more commonly known from first-millennium cities: these included small boxes for storing cosmetics or jewelry. Royal gifts, tribute from subject lands, and booty from defeated states brought enormous quantities of ivories into the hands of the conquering Assyrians. Such treasures were stored at Nimrud (Kalhu), the seat of the Assyrian kings from 863 to 707 b. c.e. Thousands of ivory artifacts have been recovered from the Review Palace known as Fort Shalmaneser and from wells and elsewhere in the main palace complex. These were abandoned by looters during the sack of the city in 612 b. c.e. after they had stripped off the gold leaf with which most, if not all, of them had been covered. Some resemble the stone relief carvings of Assyrian palaces in style and subject matter; many were Phoenician, often showing strong Egyptian influences and making frequent use of glass and stone inlays, and others were in a north-Syrian style, or a style combining Syrian and Phoenician features, and a few were from Urartu, perhaps those taken when Sargon II sacked the city of Musasir in 714 b. c.e. Phoenician craftsmen were particularly skilled in working ivory, and many probably worked for Assyrian kings as prisoners of war.
Many of the Nimrud ivories are panels and plaques that had decorated furniture or the palace walls, depicting small scenes or figures, among which sphinxes and griffins were popular. Ivory was also made into table legs, chair and couch backs, mirror handles, elaborately decorated boxes and flasks, cheek pieces for horse harnesses, and hinged writing boards. The latter were recovered as innumerable tiny pieces of burned ivory and had to be pieced together; they had originally been covered with a writing surface of beeswax, mixed with orpiment to soften it. One stopper for a container was carved in the form of a shallow bowl over which loomed the heads of a pair of lions acting as spouts. The containers were often covered with busy interwoven decoration, showing animals, griffins, lions, and bulls attacking people or other an-
Levantine craftsmen were skilled in the production of ivories of many kinds. This sphinx from the palace of King Ahab of Israel was part of a furniture decoration. Very similar pieces were found among the ivories at Nimrud (Kalhu). (Zev Radovan/Land of the Bible Picture Archive)
Imals, birds, and other motifs. A number of small ivory pots, generally with geometric decoration, were probably used for kohl: Cosmetic pencils found with them matched holes in their lids.
Some ivory plaques had inlays of glass or fine stone. One superb example showed a boy being mauled by a lion, against a background of lotus and papyrus flowers, their heads inlaid with tiny red and blue pieces of carnelian and lapis lazuli, while their stalks and the boy's loincloth were overlaid with gold leaf. His hair was represented by blackened ivory pegs with gilded tops. A
Number of ivories took the form of human figures or heads, including an elegant flask partly formed by the head and torso of a woman in an Egyptian-style wig, a series of small statues of young men carrying and leading animals, and the female mask nicknamed the "Mona Lisa"; there were also several fine figurines of bulls. A fragment from a larger object consisted of ivory birds and lapis lazuli fruit attached to bronze-wire branches.
Many of the ivories from Nimrud were blackened by fire. Although in many cases this happened when the city was sacked, some pieces were probably deliberately heated to produce a uniform and attractive black surface, which was enhanced by polishing. In other cases ivory was colored by staining or painting. Ivory was carved with tools and drills of stone or metal; compasses were sometimes used in creating the designs. Tusks were divided into sections; from the hollow pulp cavity boxes were made, and the solid sections were cut horizontally into slices for the manufacture of plaques. Mortice and tenon joints were employed to join pieces together, and Aramaic letters inscribed on the back allowed them to be correctly assembled. Inlays were set into champleve or cloisonne cells and fixed with adhesives, which were also used to join ivory pieces. Frequently objects were gilded or covered in gold foil, applied before inlays were added.
Bitumen. Substantial quantities of bitumen (natural asphalt) were obtained from the stretch between Hit and Ramadi on the middle Euphrates, where it welled up and could be collected either as a viscous liquid or as lumps; it was also available in other areas including Jebel Bishri, the Zagros foothills east of the Tigris, the banks of the Karun River in Elam, and the area around Ur. The wide range of uses to which it was put included construction (discussed previously), caulking boats, strengthening and waterproofing leather, lining baskets to make them watertight, sealing jars, and burning as a fuel. It was employed as a decorative inlay in stone and faience and also as an adhesive holding inlays of other materials in place. Figurines were sometimes carved from dry lumps of bitumen. Its "magical" properties were employed in rituals and medicine where it was an ingredient of ointments. It was a versatile material that was easily recycled: old bitumen was removed from boats with a hammer and chisel and when required for reuse was heated to a liquid.
Pottery
The clays that were the raw material for making pottery were readily available as river sediments throughout the area watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. These might be used with little working to make coarse wares such as storage vessels and cooking pots, but finer textured pottery, such as that made on the tournette or the potter's wheel, had to be worked well to remove mineral inclusions. The clay was brought to the required degree of plasticity by adding fillers (tempers) such as chaff, dung, sand, or ash.
Early Mesopotamian pottery was handmade, using a variety of techniques (see photos pp. 54, 57, 59). The simplest method was to press a hollow into a ball of clay and smooth and thin its walls between thumb and fingers. Slabs
Of clay could be pressed together and used to build pots. Most commonly handmade pots were built up of coils or rings of clay. From the mid-fifth millennium, pottery throughout Mesopotamia began to be made on the tour-nette ("slow-wheel" or turntable), a flat disc balanced on a pivot or spindle set into the ground, which could be turned by hand, speeding up the shaping and decorating of pots. In the fourth millennium, the potter's wheel appeared in southern Mesopotamia: This device had a lower flywheel set in motion with a stick or propelled with the foot, attached to an upper wheel, disc, or working head, on which the clay was thrown. A disc 75 centimeters wide found in the Uruk-period levels at Ur may have been such a flywheel: A small hole on its rim would have taken the stick used to set it spinning. Although some vessels were entirely wheel thrown, others had their base finished by hand. Alongside the finely shaped wheel-thrown pots of the Uruk period, crude "beveled-rim bowls" were also produced in large numbers: These were made by pressing coarse clay into a mold.
Wheel-made pottery was initially confined to Babylonia but was later made throughout Mesopotamia. Some of the wares produced were extremely fine. For example, a ware with eggshell-thin walls made at Nuzi in the fourteenth century b. c.e. was so delicate that it could not be lifted from the wheel without distortion, so it was strengthened and decorated by impressing dimples into the sides. Similar dimpled cups remained a popular prestige ware in the first millennium, including the late-seventh-century Palace Ware found at Nimrud. A variety of different shapes were regularly made for different purposes: Types mentioned in texts included beer jars with an upward-pointing spout; pointed-based jars for milk and tripods to support them; jars for storing and transporting oil; vats for serving wine and probably beer; and honey containers. cups, bowls, dishes, goblets, pedestaled vessels, fenestrated stands, jars, and vases are among the shapes known from excavated sites; sealed jars were used for storing archives of tablets. Clay was also used to make human and animal figurines, spindle whorls, beads, architectural materials, including cones for decorating walls, and slingshot, as well as substituting for stone as the material for sickles, hammers, pestles, and other tools. Molds for casting metal objects were often made of clay, and the kitchens in the eighteenth-century palace at Mari had terra-cotta molds for shaping or decorating food: These included shallow discs and trays with relief designs of people, animals, or geometric patterns and deeper molds in the shape of a fish, complete with details of its scales.
Newly formed vessels might be decorated by incising, impressing, or excising designs into the surface, such as the patterns of lines, slashes, and dots that decorate some of the "Ninevite 5" pottery of early-third-millennium northern Mesopotamia; stamps might also be used to impress designs: Some Assyrian pottery was stamped with small rosettes. Other types of decoration were applied after the pottery had been allowed to dry to leather-hard. At this point the vessel might be covered with a slip (a clay wash), which could then be burnished, making the vessel relatively watertight. This was a common treatment throughout Mesopotamian prehistory and history. Early pottery was also decorated by painting: By the Halaf period, elaborate geometric designs were being painted in three colors. Ubaid-period pottery was decorated in bands on the tournette by holding a paint-laden brush against the vessel. Brushes with a number of tufts were used to create multiple patterns. However, the beginning of wheel-made pottery saw the decline of decoration, pottery thereafter being mass-produced wares that were of good quality but often dull and generally plain. Exceptions include the pottery made by the Mitanni, painted with geometric and figurative designs, including spirals, birds, and floral motifs. An unusual cup found at Tell Brak in northern Mesopotamia had a molded nose, surrounded by the painted features of an unshaven man.
From the later second millennium, some ceramics began to be glazed. Initially the technology was applied to small objects such as figurines and wall plaques and the glaze was a pale blue green, but by the early first millennium glazed bottles for holding precious liquids such as perfumes were being manufactured in considerable quantities and were decorated with geometric designs in a variety of colors—white, yellow, brown, blue, turquoise, and green. Glazed ceramic tiles and bricks were also made and used architecturally to great effect, for example on the Ishtar Gate at Babylon and along the associated Processional Way.
Pottery could be fired in clamps (bonfire kilns), a technique still in use, but by about 6000 b. c.e. updraft kilns were also used: The fuel was placed in a pit with a stokehole at the side through which more fuel could be added during the firing. Above this was a perforated floor on which the pots were stacked. A cylindrical chamber of baked clay surrounded the pottery and was roofed with large sherds, which were removed after the firing was completed. The difficulty of controlling the firing temperature is illustrated by pottery of the Ubaid period, which ranges from a soft friable ware with a poorly fired pink body and pink or red painted decoration, through medium-fired yellow or white on which the paint had turned brown, to overfired vessels of a grayish green hue with the decoration turned black. Later wares show greater mastery of firing conditions.
A few sites have yielded evidence of pottery making, and texts also provide information. In the Old Babylonian settlement of Mashkan Shapir, pottery workshops seem to have been distributed throughout the settlement, with each neighborhood being served by their own potter. Kilns and workshops have been found in or on the outskirts of a number of cities, such as Lagash and Ur, where Woolley found an extensive Uruk-period pottery production area with kilns, misfired wasters, and other kiln debris. Texts from the Ur III period refer to workshops of fewer than a dozen people with a supervisor, whose output might be confined to vessels intended for particular purposes or serving the needs of the establishment to which they were attached, and larger potteries producing a wider range of pots, such as those at Umma, which made forty-six different types of vessel. There were also villages and small towns of potters: One, situated at Umm al-Hafriyat near Nippur, had around five hundred kilns. In the highly regulated environment of the Ur III Empire, texts record the amount of time that needed to be spent on producing vessels of particular types and volumes.
Terra-Cottas. Pottery figurines were hand-modeled, and some were not fired but merely dried in the sun. Clay plaques with high-relief decoration were used as divine images in small shrines, as were crudely carved gypsum figurines. Copies of the divine image were made into small clay plaques with relief decoration or small clay figurines for use in domestic shrines and might be acquired by pilgrims visiting the shrine. These were mass-produced by pressing the clay into molds. Simple figurines of worshippers were also made as offerings to place in shrines. Plaques also depicted a range of other themes (see photos pp. 32, 159, 162), such as people at their work or scenes from mythology. The Kassite dynasty made more extensive use of the medium: Objects included a sensitive portrait head of an individual, with details picked out in paint, and a beautiful closely observed image of a lioness.
Faience and Glass
Faience. The production of vitreous materials began in Mesopotamia in the Ubaid period with the appearance of small objects of glazed siliceous stone and of faience with a crushed quartz core and a vitreous surface. A number of faience beads, seals, and amulets in the form of animals come from fourth-millennium levels at Tell Brak. In the third millennium the number and range of faience objects increased, including small vessels, figurines, seals, and votive weapons such as mace heads. Faience tiles and wall inlays were used in some architecture, such as the mausoleum of the Ur III king Shulgi, and statues of gods sometimes had a beard of faience. Small faience vessels were embellished with incised designs or sculpted decoration. Faience paste was modeled by hand or pressed into a mold to form the shapes required, and when dry, these pieces were fired.
In the later second millennium faience production grew in scale, with palace workshops in Mesopotamia and the Levant mass-producing jewelry, cylinder seals, and vessels. Nuzi and Tell al-Rimah have yielded many faience objects, and Kassite-period Babylon had a series of kilns for firing faience. Among the most impressive objects of this period were rhytons in the shape of women's or animal heads, made in the Levant and widely distributed. Pendants in the form of women's faces, inlaid with bitumen or pieces of colored faience set in bitumen, and cups with floral decoration in contrasting colors were also popular throughout Mesopotamia. The range of colors produced included black from ferrous manganese, blue, green, and blue-green from copper, and yellow from antimony. Other faience objects included ornaments such as discs to sew onto clothing and tassels for horse harnesses, inlays for furniture, knobs for decorating architecture, wall tiles, small flasks for perfumes and ointments, and votive figurines. Faience objects such as beads and cylinder seals continued to be produced into Neo-Assyrian times although they declined in popularity with the development of polychrome pottery and glass.
Glass. Some beads of true glass were made in the third millennium, probably accidentally when faience was overheated, but raw glass found at Eridu, Eshnunna, and Tell Brak in the late third millennium suggests that glass was already being produced deliberately. Glass has a similar composition to faience but is heated until the mixture of silica, alkali, lime, and metal-oxide pigments melts to a viscous liquid. It was not until around 1600 b. c.e. that glass began to be made in some quantity and its properties fully exploited: Mitanni could well have been the center of these developments. Glass vessels (usually blue) were formed by wrapping a trail of molten glass around a core of clay and dung, which was dug out when the glass had cooled; alternatively the core could be dipped into molten glass. The soft vessel was then marvered (rolled on a smooth stone slab) to smooth the surface and even up the shape. Blobs and lines in contrasting colors, generally yellow and white, were often added as decoration. Beads were similarly made by wrapping a molten thread of glass around a metal rod. Molten glass was also drawn out into rods of various thicknesses, which were used to decorate or manufacture mosaic or marbled-glass beakers and bottles: Many of these are known from Nuzi and Tell al-Rimah, and from Tell Brak where blue glass ingots were also found. Glass objects produced in northern Mesopotamia at this time included spacer beads and plaques depicting nude women. Around the same time the technical problems of bonding glass with the surface of ceramics were solved, and the manufacture of glazed pottery began, followed later by that of glazed figurines, tiles, bricks, and architectural knobs. Pottery vessels with polychrome designs began to be made in Assyria around the turn of the millennium, the colors being kept separate by thin ribs between them, and Babylonia followed its lead. Around the eighth century objects such as pendants and inlay pieces for jewelry and furniture began to be made by casting in an open mold or in a closed mold, using a method similar to the cire-perdue (lost-wax) casting of metals. cast-glass vessels were finished by grinding and polishing and might be decorated with cut designs. One of the earliest and finest examples of this was a vase from the North-West Palace at Nimrud inscribed with the name of Sargon II and the figure of a lion. To this period also belongs the beginning of production of clear glass resembling crystal. It is uncertain how this was made: Glassblowing is generally thought to have been invented in the Levant only in the first century b. c.e., but the fineness of this glass suggests that the technology may already have been in use in Assyria in the early first millennium. Another first for this region was painted glass, known from two tiny plaques of clear glass painted with sphinxes found in Fort Shalmaneser at Nimrud.
Glass was an expensive commodity, used for producing luxury items owned by royalty and the elite and for decorating important buildings; faience was probably a cheaper alternative, as was glazed pottery. Both faience and glass originally imitated precious stones and were used in similar ways, and the clear glass made from around 700 b. c.e. onward simulated rock crystal. Texts from the second millennium onward give recipes for producing glass and glazes, including mixtures that would reproduce the colors of valued stones like lapis lazuli, carnelian, and sapphire.
Metalworking
Copper and Bronze. Copper and lead were being smelted in the Near East by the late seventh millennium b. c.e., and by the fourth millennium copper metallurgy was a well-established industry in southern Mesopotamia. copper with a high arsenic content, probably imported from Talmessi in western Iran, was used, producing an alloy that was harder than pure copper and easier to cast. Although most objects from this period and later were produced in simple open molds, the discovery of a few small Uruk-period figurines made by cire-perdue (lost-wax) casting demonstrates that more advanced techniques were already known.
Around 3000 b. c.e., the first bronzes began to appear in various parts of the Near East, including Tepe Gawra and ED I Kish, but bronze was for a long time a prestige material reserved for the finest objects. This is well illustrated by artifacts in the Royal Cemetery at Ur: Here the highly prized sheet-metal vessels were made of bronze, whereas more ordinary objects were cast in arsenical copper, despite the fact that copper is easier to hammer into sheet metal and bronze is easier to cast. Bronze objects did not become common until the early second millennium b. c.e., and third-millennium metal tools, weapons, statues, and architectural ornaments were generally of copper. Exceptional examples of the latter survive from the temple of Ninhursaga at al-Ubaid, where three friezes depict standing bulls, kneeling calves, and the Imdugud bird flanked by deer; some parts were hammered up from sheet copper, but the heads of the cattle and the deer and bird figures were made of cast copper. The large portrait head of an Akkadian king, probably Naram-Sin (see photo p. 77), was also still made of copper rather than bronze. This was an exceptionally fine piece, depicting the king realistically, with meticulous attention to the detail of the elaborate hair arrangement and beard, but also conveying an impression of majesty and power.
By the end of the fourth millennium, copper from Magan (Oman), at first imported via Dilmun (Bahrein), began to be used in southern Mesopotamia and by 2100, if not earlier, gold, copper, and tin were among the imports from Meluhha (the Indus civilization) as well. Tin was used not only for alloying with copper but also as a solder and occasionally to make artifacts. Its source is controversial. It is now known to be among the metal ores present in the Taurus, although this source was probably not exploited in antiquity; NeoAssyrian texts do refer to tin from Anatolia, but this could have been alluvial tin. Earlier tin most probably came from various sources in Central Asia, from where it was traded both overland to enter Mesopotamia via Elam, and, in the later third millennnium, overland to the Indus and thence by sea to Mesopotamia; tin from the Arawalli hills, a source of Meluhhan copper, might also have been mined and traded. In the early second millennium the Gulf trade was abandoned and copper came from sources in the west, particularly Anatolia and Alashiya (Cyprus); other sources could have included Arabia.
Gold, Silver, and Lead. The Taurus range ("Silver Mountain") was the probable main source of silver and lead from the third millennium onward, although these may also have been obtained from parts of Iran, including Elam and Aratta. Lead was used for occasional objects from the sixth millennium onward and was popular in the Jemdet Nasr period for making vessels, although these declined in number thereafter and few were made after the end of the ED period. Jewelry such as pendants and beads, statue bases, and weights might also be made from lead. By 3500 b. c.e. there is evidence at Habuba Kabira of cupellation to extract the silver from the lead. Lead was on occasion alloyed with copper to produce a soft but ductile metal; silver was also alloyed with copper in the late Uruk period, probably experimentally. Silver was made into small prestige objects, and a few vessels such as the magnificent mid-third-millennium vase of Enmetena from Girsu. It was frequently made into wire from which rings and coils were formed: These were used as a medium of exchange, commodities being valued with reference to weights of silver. In the Kassite period, gold was similarly used, as was tin at Nuzi in the Middle Assyrian period, but silver was for most of antiquity the main exchange medium and value standard employed throughout the Near East.
Anatolia also produced electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver that is similar in color to gold. Much of the "gold" used in the ancient Near East was actually electrum. However, one Ur III text lists salt as a commodity present in a goldsmith's workshop at Ur, suggesting that the gold was sometimes extracted from electrum by cementation, a process in which electrum and salt were heated together so that the silver was given off as silver chloride. Most gold probably came from alluvial deposits and was obtained by panning. Sources are hard to pin down, but textual evidence shows that gold was obtained from a number of places, including eastern Iran and Anatolia, Meluhha in the third millennium, and Egypt in the second. Gold was little used before the mid-third millennium, but the large number of gold objects from the Royal Cemetery at Ur (ca. 2600 b. c.e.) already display mastery of a range of advanced techniques, including gilding, cloisonne inlaying, and the manufacture of gold wire. The wig-shaped helmet of Meskalamdug, created of sheet gold by repousse work and chasing, faithfully reproducing every lock of hair, is probably the finest piece, but it is closely rivaled by the gold and lapis lazuli dagger decorated with gold studs, in a sheath decorated by granulation and filigree, and the fine bulls' and cows' heads of sheet gold with hair and beards of lapis lazuli that ornamented the sound boxes of lyres. Fine leaves of beaten gold formed part of the headdresses of the women buried in the tombs. Later objects included solid-gold jewelry, figures, vessels, and decorative weapons, and gold foil was used to cover the statues of deities. The gold and electrum objects found in the eighth-century Assyrian royal tombs at Nimrud show that the high standards of craftsmanship were maintained and extended: They included a crown of flowers and vines worked in granulation, an extraordinary ribbon inlaid with agate, elaborate earrings covered with tiny granulated designs, substantial armlets with cloisonne inlays of gemstone and glass, and plates with fine figurative decoration.
Metalworking. Texts referring to metalworking are known from the early third millennium onward. Some give the recipe for bronze, usually around one part tin to eight to ten parts copper, although in practice many artifacts had a far lower tin content. This might have come about through the reuse of scrap metal, bronze being mixed with copper, reducing the proportion of tin present.
A small forge from Eshnunna, equipped with a hearth and an anvil stone, may have been used by a smith who made simple objects from scrap metal and mended tools for local residents. Although some smiths and metalworkers were independent artisans, most probably worked for the palace or temple.
World History
