Jesse Bryant Wilder - Art History For Dummies

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FIGURE 5-5: King Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions captures the tense action of a lion hunt.

After the Persians and their allies sacked the Assyrian capital Nineveh, Babylon reemerged as the center of Mesopotamian culture. Nabopolassar, a Babylonian general who had sided with the Persians, became the first king of New Babylon. Although the kingdom lasted for only 70 years, its beauty and culture have become legendary, especially as they flowered under the reign of Nabopolassar’s famous son, Nebuchadnezzar.

The kings of New Babylon returned to the Sumerian model of being “shepherds of the people.” Although Nebuchadnezzar attacked Judah, the New Babylonians were much less warlike than the Assyrians. New Babylonian art reflected this quieter and gentler period; it was much less aggressive and less active than Assyrian art.

Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt Babylon into the most beautiful city on earth with these artistic marvels:

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Nebuchadnezzar is best known for these magnificent gardens, a present he supposedly gave his wife. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the original Wonders of the World, but the Hanging Gardens didn’t hang. They were terraced, rooftop gardens, irrigated by water pumped from the Euphrates. To visitors, it must’ve seemed as though an oasis had blossomed on the rooftops of Babylon.

The Ishtar Gate: As a gorgeous entrance to the city of Babylon, this gate is one of Nebuchadnezzar’s greatest architectural achievements. The animals in the Ishtar Gate look like ornaments. On the front, against a background of glazed blue bricks, stand decorative horses, blue-horned bulls, and dragons made of gold-colored, turquoise, and blue bricks. The top of the gate is crenellated (notched) like a medieval castle. But instead of squares (like in a medieval castle), the crenellations rise like mini-ziggurats.

What’s the difference between the Ishtar Gate and Assyrian art? In the Ishtar Gate, all the animals strike the same pose; there is no movement. But the Ishtar Gate wasn’t intended to tell a story. It was meant to be beautiful and imposing, a reflection of Nebuchadnezzar’s cultivated tastes. The stiffness of the animals adds to this impression. Action would take away from the solemn majesty of the goddess’s gate.

Chapter 6

IN THIS CHAPTER

Reading one of the oldest historical documents in the world

Sizing up the pyramids

Exploring the art of Egyptian tombs

Reading a Book of the Dead

Understanding why Egyptian statues are so colossal

The mountain-high pyramids and stony stare of the Great Sphinx have awed humankind for thousands of years. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote, “There is no country that possesses so many wonders, nor any that has such a number of works which defy description.” The Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Marc Antony were so impressed by Egyptian culture and wealth that they had to first marry Egypt (in the form of Cleopatra) and then rule it. The mystique of Ancient Egypt still captivates the modern world. But today Egypt’s biggest draw isn’t the pyramids or Cleopatra, but Egyptian mummies, magic, and tomb art.

Mummies and the magical resurrection rituals painted on the walls of tombs and coffins have inspired witches’ spells, short stories, movies, documentaries, art historians, archeologists, and even the fashion industry. The film companies of the world have unreeled more than 90 mummy movies since the dawn of cinema, from a French short in 1899 about Cleopatra’s mummy to Hollywood’s The Mummy in 1999 and its sequels, as well as a Tom Cruise interpretation in 2017. The Three Stooges even got into the act with We Want Our Mummy (featuring King Rootentooten) in 1939 and their more mature work, Mummy’s Dummies in 1948. Abbott and Costello followed up in 1955 with Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy .

Mummies have teased people’s imaginations since at least the Middle Ages, when people believed they had healing powers. Twelfth-century doctors prescribed mummy dust (made from pulverized corpses) for wounds and bruises, and until around 1500 people ingested mummy powder to relieve upset stomachs. Even in the 17th century, witches — like those depicted in Shakespeare’s Macbeth — used mummies to help them forecast the future.

The discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 made front-page news and spawned an Egyptian fashion craze. Women forgot their distaste for bugs and put on scarab-beetle jewelry, donned pharaoh blouses with hieroglyphic prints, and carried golden pyramid- and sphinx-shaped ladies’ compacts.

More than a century earlier, Napoleon had triggered a global fascination with Egypt in 1798 when he led the first major scientific expedition there, while trying to conquer Egypt and Syria. Egyptology (the study of Ancient Egypt) has been almost a cult science ever since.

In the third century BC, an Egyptian priest named Manetho cataloged Egypt’s ancient rulers into 31 dynasties. (A dynasty is continuous rule by members of the same family.) Today, historians still use his list, which begins in about 3100 BC with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and ends with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BC. The 4th through the 20th dynasties are divided by modern historians into three kingdoms — the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom — each with its own distinct features, as well as two intermediate periods bracketing the Middle Kingdom. Anything between the New Stone Age and the first dynasty is called Predynastic (see Table 6-1).

TABLE 6-1Ancient Egyptian Historical Periods

Because Egyptians believed the ka (soul) reunited with the body in the tomb, the body had to be painstakingly preserved through mummification. Here are the three basic steps of mummification: