>>> In spring 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
unveiled a landmark exhibition:
>>> The World Between Empires:
Art and Identity In The Ancient Middle East.
This exceptionally large and complex exhibition
brings together nearly one hundred and ninety works
made across the Middle East some 2000 years ago.
>>> With the support of over twenty museums and
institutions around the globe, the show covers a
period from the 1st century BC to the
3rd century AD, when the Roman Empire in the west was
competing with the Parthian Empire in the east,
for control over the Middle East, the global
trade center, the nexus of lucrative silk and incense
trades. The signature of the show is the Goddess
from Babylon in present-day Iraq.
>>> She comes from Babylon in present-day Iraq.
The rubies in her eyes and naval are imports.
They most likely come from Myanmar. She was found
in a tomb complete with her gold jewelry. Her body
incorporates the forms of a Greco-Roman Aphrodite or Venus.
>>> The textile trade was hugely important at that time.
>>> This is a very early piece of silk from the
3rd Century that represents the emerging trade between China,
the Middle East, and the rest of the Roman Empire.
This is an extraordinary painted shield,
a shield carried by a Roman soldier at this time.
>>> Our journey starts from modern Yemen,
ancient Southwest Arabia.
>>> South Arabia was the source of several major
commodities that were being used and traded
internationally. The most important one was
frankincense, the incense that was preferenced
in temples, in homes, in funerary rituals.
Frankincense was harvested, transported
north by caravans and the kingdoms of Southwestern
Arabia prove wealthy through that trade.
We have objects around us from particularly from
Timna, the capital of the Kingdom called Qataban.
We're now moving into Nabataea and specifically
Petra, the Nabataean capital in modern Jordan.
We have divine images that vary all the way from
plain stones through images like this, to the
kinds of busts that you see around us. I think
Petra was a living city and a green city.
There were water channels and irrigation and a big population.
>>> In the area called Judaea, fierce rebellions
occurred against Roman rule. This Magdala stone
discovered in 2009 dates from the 1st Century.
The front imagery relates to the Temple of Jerusalem
which was still standing at the time.
The cities of Tyre and Sidon
located along the Mediterranean Coast
were hugely important commercial centers.
This gallery looks at the art from the
city of Palmyra. Palmyra is particularly famous for
its funerary portraits of the city’s elite families.
These families grew rich because of Palmyra’s
strategic location along the trade route that run
through the Syrian Desert. This portrait has a great
deal of ancient pigment preserved, highlighting
her jewelry and her blue eyes. And these two are
from Rome, a Palmyra community that was
established in Rome. We can get a sense of that
even when they left Palmyra, their religion
was a huge part of their identity.
Here is an image of
gods dressed in armor who would protect the
cargo that people transported through the desert.
Dura Eurpos in Eastern Syria is an exceptional site for
understanding what went on in the Middle East.
Christianity, Judaism, and polytheism all being
practiced in the same places at the same time.
In Dura, we have exceptional evidence.
>>> So behind me are wall paintings and sculptures
from various temples devoted to all sorts of
different gods. Behind us over there are tiles from
a 3rd Century synagogue.
>>> Dura is especially famous for the figural wall
painting from the synagogue, which absolutely revolutionized
our understanding of early Jewish art.
>>> Over here are wall paintings from the
Christian House Church at Dura, with the earliest
known images of Jesus shown here performing
two miracles; walking on water on the left with Peter and
here healing the paralytics. So Jesus and
the paralytic on his bed and the paralytic able to walk.
So all of these buildings were in really
close proximity to one another and give us an
incredible window into what life was really like.
>>> We move now into Mesopotamia.
>>> This is a sliver coffin. It's a kind of typical Parthian
period burial forming in Mesopotamia.
Behind us on the wall, stucco decoration.
That's fragments from the Greek Theater that was
built at Babel. So you're really watching cities change.
Now across our region in this period people are
speaking different Semitic languages or certainly a lot
of Greek speakers, but in the temple of Babylon,
especially people were still studying and reading in
Sumerian and Akkadian. One of our tablets here is the
song of lamentation. It's the goddess Ishtar Inanna mourning
the destruction of her cities and the song is in Sumerian.
It's a very, very ancient text.
We're coming to the end
of the show. Now the Parthian empire basically
ceases to exist. The successful rebellion from Southern Iran
leads a king called Ardeshir and his son Shapur to conquer
the whole empire. That founds the Sasanian Empire.
One object in this Gallery shows a Sasanian king
grasping a Roman Emperor by the wrist. It's a sort
of symbolic capture, probably of the Roman
Emperor Valerian. It's a moment of transformation
echo on into the Sasanian and Islamic worlds.