(light piano)
- [Steven] Almost 5,000 years ago
somebody carefully buried a small group
of alabaster figures in the floor of a temple.
- [Beth] And we're looking at one of those
figures now and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
calls this a standing male worshiper.
He was buried along with 11 eleven other
figures for a total of 12, most of them male.
- [Steven] We're looking at one of the smaller figures.
They range from just under a foot to almost three feet.
- [Beth] The temple where these were buried
was in a city called Eshnunna in the
northern part of ancient Mesopotamia.
- [Steven] What is now called Tell Asmar
The figures from Tell Asmar are widely
considered to be the great expression
of early dynastic Sumerian art.
And we think the temple was dedicated to the god Abu.
- [Beth] At this time, the third millennium BCE,
in this area around the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers some of the earliest cities in the
world emerged and writing emerged.
This is a watershed in human history.
The cities had administrative buildings, temples, palaces,
many of which have been unearthed by archeologists.
- [Steven] This is the transitional period
right after the Bronze Age, the tail end of the
Neolithic when civilizations are founded in
the great river valleys around the world.
And he's adorable.
- [Beth] He is adorable.
His wide eyes and his sense of attentiveness
are very appealing I think but of course
he wasn't meant to be looking at us.
He was meant to be attentive to a statue,
a sculpture of a god who was believed
to be embodied in the sculpture.
- [Steven] In fact, we believe that the
person for whom this was a kind of stand-in
was also embodied in this figurine.
- [Beth] So an elite member of ancient
Sumerian culture paid to have this sculpture
made and placed before the god to be a kind of
stand-in to perhaps continually offer prayers,
to be continually attentive to the god.
- [Steven] His hands are clasped together,
he stands erect, his shoulders are broad
so there is a sense of frontality.
- [Beth] Even though he is carved on both sides
he was meant to be seen from the front.
Although that term "meant to be seen" is a funny one.
- [Steven] Well he was meant to be seen by a God.
You can see that the hair is parted at the center
of the scalp and comes down in wavelets
or perhaps braids that spiral down and then
frame the central beard which is quite formal
and cascades down in a series of regular waves.
His hands are clasped just below the beard.
His shoulders are really broad, his upper
arms very broad and then there's very
fine incising at the bottom of his skirt.
- [Beth] But it's odd to me how cylindrical the bottom
part of his body is and how flattened out the torso is.
- [Steven] If you look at the face carefully, you can
see that the very large eyes are in fact inlaid shell
and in the center the pupils are black limestone.
And you can also see that there is an incising of the
eyebrows that might have originally been inlaid as well.
- [Beth] This really different from Egyptian
culture which emerges at the same time.
In Egyptian culture, the sculptures primarily
represent the pharaoh, the king and indicate
his divinity but in the ancient Near East
instead we have these votive images
of worshipers but not so much of the kings.
At least during this early dynastic period.
The figures at Tell Asmar that
were unearthed are very similar.
They're not meant to be portraits of a specific
person but a symbol of that person.
- [Steven] But he does look very humble,
his mouth is closed, his lips are sealed together
and of course he is wonderfully attentive.
- [Beth] And the fact that his hands are clasped
I think makes him seem more humble as well.
- [Steven] There is some interesting subtle
choices that whoever carved this made.
Look at the way that the skirt extends out
and attaches itself to the forearms
a bit wider than we would expect.
- [Beth] And the torso it's just this almost V-shape.
There is a sense of geometric patterning here
and not the naturalistic forms of the body.
- [Steven] If you look at the back of the
figure you can see that there is a little
cleft that's been carved in horizontally.
And there's also what seems to be the indication
perhaps of a tied belt that hangs down.
- [Beth] You understand I think the artist's
decision not to make a naturalistic figure
because a naturalistic figure before the god
might give a sense of someone just visiting,
just passing through but this idea of a static,
symmetrical, frontal, wide eyed figure gives
a sense of timelessness of a figure that is
forever offering prayers to the god.
(light piano)