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Some Sumerian Statues in the Iraq, Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Lamia al-Gailani
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Extract

The Iraq Museum has acquired by confiscation a number of Sumerian statues. Their provenance unfortunately is unknown, but their many similarities to statues from the Diyala sites suggest that this new group may have come from the same region. For dating these new pieces, therefore, I have relied on Frankfort's publications of the Diyala group.

The first statue (Plate XXIIa, b) portrays a youth. The head has been broken but repaired. The front of the body is damaged, presumably where it lay face to the ground. The eye inlays are missing and the nose is damaged. The hands are broken, so we cannot see clearly how they were folded. The hair is rendered in horizontal ridges and is divided into two symmetrical halves falling down over the shoulders and chest. The short kilt is in shape a truncated cone, with double overlapping tassels at the bottom. The legs are complete and are supported by a stone slab resting on a “T”-shaped base.

The back of the head is broken on the left-hand side, but the parting of the ridged hair is clear (Plate XXIIb). The tasselled girdle has been carefully worked and carved in relief. There are two statues from the Diyala region similar to this figure. One (no. 33) is poorly made and does not bear close comparison with the new piece; the other (no. 32) is roughly worked and has been damaged by salt, whereas that of Plate XXIIa, b is more carefully carved and can be ranked with the best works of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 1972 , pp. 73 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1972

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References

1 Frankfort, H., Sculpture of the Third Millennium B.C. from Tell Asmar and Khafajah (OIP 44, Chicago, 1939)Google Scholar (hereafter Frankfort, Sculpture); id., More Sculpture from the Diyala Region (OIP 50, Chicago, 1943) (hereafter Frankfort, More Sculpture).

2 Frankfort, Sculpture, Pl. 44: 32, 33.

3 See also Frankfort, Sculpture, Pl. 27.

4 The division of the earlier abstract from the later naturalistic style has been questioned. Sir Max Mallowan stresses that both styles could have existed simultaneously (Mallowan, M. E. L., “The Early Dynastic Period”, CAH I (new ed.), ch. xvi, p. 17)Google Scholar. Frankfort also when discussing the sculpture from Tell Agrab pointed out that “it now appears that the sculptural changes do not coincide with the division” (Frankfort, More Sculpture, p. 5).

5 Frankfort, Sculpture, p. 21.

6 Ur Excavations II, Pl. 197, no. 57.

7 Frankfort, Sculpture, Pl. 107, no. 187.

8 Ibid., Pl. 1, no. 1; 5, no. 2.

9 Ibid., Pl. 65, no. 78; 67, no. 80.

10 Ibid., Ch. 3, p. 28.

11 Ibid., Pl. 4, no. 2.

12 Ibid., Pl. 74, no. 104.

13 Ibid., Ch. 2, p. 19.

14 Frankfort, More Sculpture, Pl. 44, no. 287.

15 Wootton, J., “A Sumerian Statue from Tell Aswad” (Sumer 21 (1965), Pls. 1–4)Google Scholar.

16 Parrot, A., Mission archéologique de Mari, III (Paris, 1967), Pl. 49Google Scholar.

17 Frankfort, Sculpture, Ch. 2, p. 19.

18 Sir Max Mallowan suggests that the indentations on the side of the throne represent hand grips which porters, one on either side, used to transfer these chairs and thrones from place to place; they would have been awkward to carry otherwise.

19 The suggestion that this type of decoration on thrones may symbolize a temple gate stems from the fact that these chairs were reserved to the gods, particularly during the periods of Agade and the Third Dynasty of Ur. However they could simply represent an ordinary wooden or wickerwork chair, or perhaps even the little mud altars found in the domestic shrines of the third millennium.

20 Frankfort, More Sculpture, Pl. 44, no. 287.

21 A. Parrot, op. cit., Pl. XLIX.

22 Frankfort, Sculpture, Pl. 65, no. 78.