English

OIP 44. Sculpture of the Third Millennium B.C. from Tell Asmar and Khafajah

More works of Early Dynastic sculpture have come to light in the excavations of the Oriental Institute’s Iraq Expedition, under Henri Frankfort, than the sum total of all those found at other sites or preserved in various museums. In addition, the circumstances of their discovery have made it possible for Frankfort to distinguish two successive styles, so that for the first time an insight into the development of early Mesopotamian (“Sumerian”) art is obtained. Frankfort has given us the results of his penetrating study of these sculptures. According to him, the earliest statues seem to go back to the very beginning of monumental sculpture in Mesopotamia, that is, to about 3000 B.C., when the human figure was for the first time sculptured in the round in stone for a monumental purpose. A parallel and seemingly contemporaneous development took place in Egypt. This was an entire new departure in pre-Greek art.

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