Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 82

Abraham, the father of the Jewish religion, was an Iraqi — sort of. According to the Bible, he was born in Ur, one of the world’s first cities, which was located in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. But in those days, that part of Mesopotamia was called Sumer. So Abraham was actually a Sumerian, or more specifically an Urian (a guy from Ur). Historians don’t know when Abraham left Ur, but until about 2334 BC, Ur was an independent city-state.

Sumer was not really a country, but a cluster of city-states, like Ancient Greece. Sumer included Ur, Uruk (Erech in the Bible), Eridu, Larsa, and about eight other cities in southern Mesopotamia. Although linked by culture, religion, and the fact that they shared the world’s first written language, the city-states didn’t unite for over a thousand years. Nevertheless, Sumerians called their patchwork “country” the “land of the civilized lords,” which makes it sound like they had some pretty “uncivilized” neighbors. They also called themselves “the black-headed people.”

Geography was good to Mesopotamia’s farmers, but not to its rulers. Unlike Egypt, which is surrounded by natural defenses — deserts on the east and west and the Mediterranean Sea on the north — Mesopotamia had no mountains, deserts, or oceans to protect it. It was easy to conquer and hard to hold on to. The Sumerians’ “uncivilized” neighbors — desert-tough nomadic tribes — must have been irresistibly attracted to this flowering oasis.

In this chapter, I examine the art and architecture of the Sumerians, the Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and New Babylonians. Although each people had their own style, these styles seemed to grow out of each other like branches on a Mesopotamian family tree. In this chapter, I lay it all out for you.