Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder

a statue of themselves and having it placed in the temple.

      Worshipping graven images

      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.

      Stare-down with God: Statuettes from Abu Temple

      People had statues like the Abu or Square Temple statuettes (see Figure 5-1a) set up in temples to commune directly with a god. I’m sure you’re thinking: Are these guys and gals bug-eyed aliens or did ancient Sumerians really look like this? The statuettes (the tallest is 30 inches high) represented real Sumerians but weren’t representative of their appearance. They are called votive statues because they’re surrogates for Sumerians who devoted themselves to, or made a vow to, their local god.

      Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY

      FIGURE 5-1: a) The statuette on the left, carved around 2700 BC, is one of twelve from the Square Temple in Eshnunna, modern day Tell Asmar. b) The female head of a goddess, on the right, from Uruk was carved between 3300 BC and 3000 BC.

Okay, but why are they bug-eyed? In horror movies, people’s eyes bulge cartoonishly when they spot a ghost. The ancient Sumerians’ eyes popped when they saw a god. Being bug-eyed meant you were devout; it showed that you were awestruck in the god’s presence and that you couldn’t take your eyes off of him or her. Even though the people of Tell Asmar (where the Abu Temple is located) didn’t have bug eyes, the clothes, beards, and hairdos of the statuettes probably roughly mirrored the Sumerians. Tell Asmar was a small town, and their sculptors weren’t as polished, so to speak, as big-city artists in Ur and Uruk.

      

Compare the description of Square Temple statuettes to the sensitively rendered mask of a god from Uruk carved approximately 500 years earlier (see Figure 5-1b), about the time the Sumerians invented writing. The mask’s eyes were most likely filled with colored stones; the eyebrows and hair were probably wrought of gold or copper, which disappeared long ago. The Square Temple statuette’s eyes are inlaid with shell and black limestone.

      

Early Egyptian statues seem squared-off and rectangular (see Chapter 6), but Sumerian statues appear cylindrical. In fact, Sumerian artists based the human body on the cylinder and cone. Conelike skirts flair out on the Square Temple statuettes, most of which are men. Their legs are cylinders, and their braids look like corrugated vacuum-cleaner hoses. Staircase-like beards distinguish most of the men. One of the women is bald and looks like a female Uncle Fester, minus the light bulb.

Playing Puabi’s Lyre

      When a Sumerian king or queen died, he or she didn’t go to the grave alone. More than 60 soldiers, attendants, and musicians accompanied King Abargi of Ur into the tomb. Some of these grave guests wore helmets and carried spears to protect the king from any afterlife dangers; others bore musical instruments (including Puabi’s lyre, shown in Figure 5-2) to perform for him, and a few drove wagons, which were pulled by teams of oxen. The oxen’s remains were also found in the grave.

      More than 20 attendants joined Queen Puabi in her nearby tomb, including three soldiers with drawn copper daggers and ten well-dressed women buried in two rows facing each other. Whether these tomb groupies committed mass suicide or soldiers simply slew them, historians don’t know. We do know that working for a Sumerian ruler was a demanding job!

      

The exquisite decoration that adorns Puabi’s lyre shows that Ur artists were master craftsmen. A golden bull’s head protrudes from the harp, which stands in for the bull’s body. His blue-tipped horns, mat of blue hair, baby blue eyes, and curlicue blue beard are made of lapis lazuli, an azure or deep-blue gemstone. Note: The closest source of lapis was 2,000 miles away in Afghanistan. Obviously, trade flourished in third-millennium Asia! Under the bull’s beard is a strip of animal fables wrought with wood and shell and inlaid in bitumen, a mineral pitch made from coal or oil.

      gravure française/Alamy Stock Photo

      FIGURE 5-2: The design on the front of Puabi’s lyre illustrates four ancient fables.

But who is the bull with the blue-tipped horns? In the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh (a story about literature’s first superhero), Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu wrestle and slay the Bull of Heaven, whose horns are also made of lapis lazuli, like the bull’s head on the lyre. Closer examination of the lyre’s bands reveals these details:

       The Gilgamesh motif: In the top band, a naked macho man hugs two bulls as though they were old school chums. The bulls’ faces practically mirror the man’s, and their right legs and hooves wrap about his head like parentheses. This image, common in Mesopotamian art, is sometimes called the “Gilgamesh motif.”

       Visual stories or fables: The three other bands under the Gilgamesh motif tell a visual story or perhaps a series of fables invented long before Aesop. A lion, bear, wolf, deer, donkey, gazelle, and scorpion-man serve food and beverages or play instruments like the humanoid animals in Disney cartoons.

      

Some of the scenes in Puabi’s lyre must have seemed comic even then, like the ass playing the lyre or the wolf and lion waiters bearing food and drink for a feast. Ironically, the wolf, who wears a knife in his belt, carries a wolf’s head on a platter (it could be one of his cousins), which he apparently just dressed for dinner!

      We can only guess at the meaning of the artwork today, ponder what appear to be ironies, and enjoy the craftsmanship of artists who lived four and half millennia before us.

Unraveling the Standard of Ur

      The Standard of Ur depicts a Sumerian military victory fought in about 2600 BC. The artist tells the story of the battle and aftermath with inlaid images on three parallel strips on both sides of a wooden box. The front (shown in Figure 5-3) focuses on battle scenes, the back (shown in Figure 5-4) on the peaceful aftermath. The king is the big guy in the middle of the top band (on the war side), examining naked prisoners (one of whom is blindfolded) who file before him. The lower strips show the battle itself.

      Kamira / Shutterstock

      FIGURE 5-3: The Standard of Ur, measuring 8½