Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 87

Like most gods, Sumerian divinities lived somewhere in the sky or mountains (though of course they didn’t have an exact address). They also resided inside their statues in the temples of each city-state. In Sumer, a statue of a god wasn’t just a representation, as it was later on in Greece — it was the god. Divinities could be in more than one place at a time.

Statues could also be stand-ins for ordinary citizens. That is, if a Sumerian commissioned a statue, part of him or her took up residence in the statue — like a home away from home. For this reason, Sumerians placed statues of themselves in temples where they could interact with the statue of the local god — and ask for favors in a roundabout way.