Ancient Near East
-
Introduction
-
Prehistory: Proto-writing
-
Sumerian Art: Standard of Ur
-
Sumerian Art: Great Lyre from the "King's Grave" at Ur
-
Akkadian Art: Victory Stele of Naram-Sin
-
Babylonian Art: Law Code Stele of King Hammurabi
-
Assyrian Art: Human Headed Winged Lion and Bull (Lamassu)
-
Neo-Babylonian Art: Ishtar Gate and Processional Way
Sumerian Art: Standard of Ur Standard of Ur, c. 2600-2400 B.C.E., 21.59 x 49.5 x 12 cm (British Museum) Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker & Dr. Beth Harris
⇐ Use this menu to view and help create subtitles for this video in many different languages.
You'll probably want to hide YouTube's captions if using these subtitles.
- Man: On the back of a US dollar bill,
- there is an emblem of an eagle.
- In it's talons, You have arrows --
- of course a symbol of war,
- but on the other side, you have an olive branch --
- a symbol of peace.
- Woman: That's not so different than this object we are looking at.
- That's nearly 4500 years old,
- an object known as the Standard of Ur
- which comes from the city-state of Ur
- which is now in present day Iraq.
- Man: In Mesopotamia, really the birth place of civilization,
- and Ur is one of the great early cities.
- The word "standard" is a little misleading
- because the standard is really a flag
- that's often brought into battle,
- and the original excavator of this hypothesized that
- perhaps this was on a pole originally and was brought into battle.
- But in truth, we have no idea.
- Woman: So often when we are in the museum,
- and we are talking about ancient objects,
- we are talking about objects that had been buried
- but buried just because of the passage of time.
- And here we are looking at objects that we intentionally buried.
- They were part of what seems to be an elaborate burial ritual.
- These were excavated in the 20s and the early 30s
- by a man named Leonard Woolley
- who discovered about 16 tombs that he called "royal" tombs.
- Man: Again, we really don't know.
- But what we do know is we see fabulously expensive objects.
- Woman: And one of those valuable objects
- was the object we call today "The Standard of Ur"
- which is small, but quite beautiful and elaborately decorated.
- Man: Historians have thought that perhaps this is
- a sound box for a musical instrument.
- Other have thought it might have contained something important,
- perhaps even the currency that was used to pay for warfare.
- But we simply don't know.
- Woman: So that's one of the wonderful things about this object,
- is that it tells us so much,
- and at the same time, it tells us so little.
- Man: So let's start off with just a simple description.
- So we have this object that is small enough
- so that it could easily be carried.
- Woman: One long side seems to represent a scene of peace and prosperity.
- It's divided into three registers
- and it's framed with beautiful pieces of shell.
- Now this is important because it really does show us
- the long distance trade that this culture was involved with.
- You've got blue lapis lazuli that came from mines in Afghanistan.
- You have a red stone that would have come from India.
- And you've got the shells
- which would have come from the gulf
- just to the south of what is now Iraq.
- And it reminds us that these first great cities were possible
- because agriculture had been successful.
- In the river valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates,
- it was possible to grow a surplus of food
- that allowed for an organization of society
- where not everybody had to be in the fields all the time.
- Once there was enough food,
- some people could devote their lives to being rulers
- and some to becoming artists or artisans.
- Woman: And some to priests, right?
- You had a whole organization of society
- with different people performing different roles.
- That was suddenly possible.
- Man: And you can see that organization represented in the three registers here.
- The most important, wealthiest, most powerful figures are towards the top,
- and then we have the common laborers down at the bottom.
- Woman: And it's really typical in Ancient Near Eastern art
- for us to see scenes divided into registers.
- Man: So let's start down at the bottom and move up.
- I see a human figure bearing a heavy bag
- Woman: And that's really what we have along the entire bottom register.
- Figures who seem to be bringing things to a destination.
- We see animals, figures carrying things
- across their shoulders or on their backs.
- Man: Just above that, you can see a number of people
- leading more clearly identifiable animals.
- You can see somebody herding along
- what looks like a sheep or a ram.
- You see a bull in front of that being led by two people.
- And then perhaps goats, perhaps sheep,
- ahead of that, and another bull.
- These are people that might be bringing these animals to sacrifice
- They might be bringing them as a kind of taxation.
- We really don't know, but people have hypothesized
- that this is showing a kind of collection
- perhaps for the king, for the city.
- The register at the top clearly shows one figure
- that's more important than the rest.
- The king is larger. In fact, so large
- that his head breaks into the pictorial frame.
- Woman: And he also wears different clothing
- that helps to identify him.
- Man: He's seated on a chair that is interesting
- because it's got three straight legs
- and one leg that seems to be the leg of an animal.
- Woman: Some of the objects that we see here
- are objects that were also found in the burials.
- But I don't think they found a chair that resembles that.
- That would be fun to see.
- Man: One of the objects that has been found; however,
- are the cups that so many of the figures here are holding.
- So, clearly these figures are joining the king in some libation.
- They are drinking perhaps beer perhaps wine.
- We are not sure.
- Woman: There is some kind of celebration going on
- some festivity, or perhaps a religious ceremony.
- Man: It's worth noting that even the secondary figures here
- that is the figures who are seated but are not the king,
- are larger than the servants
- that surround them, that are standing.
- And so even within the register, you have a hierarchy
- that shows the relative importance of three levels of society.
- Woman: And then we have two figures at the far end
- who seem to be entertaining the seated figures who are drinking.
- One is playing a harp,
- and another figure on the far right, perhaps singing.
- Man: Let's go to the other side. It's a very different story.
- Woman: So again we have a scene divided into three registers,
- but here we see terrible scenes of violence.
- Man: We see a rendering of what is pretty clearly warfare.
- There are four chariots that are pulled
- by what seems to be four male donkeys.
- On the back of each chariot
- seem to be a driver as well as a warrior.
- The figure towards the rear, you will notice,
- is holding either a spear or an axe.
- And then being trampled by the horses
- perhaps felled by those weapons are the enemy.
- If you look closely, you can see some extraordinary detail.
- Look at one of the men that has been felled under the horse.
- You can see his wounds,
- you can see blood flowing.
- And if you look closely, you can notice
- the mechanism of the actual wheels of the chariots.
- There is kind of specific engineering that's being rendered here.
- Woman: One of the most interesting things about the bottom panel
- is a kind of naturalism in the battle that seems to be taking place.
- Man: You seem to move from a walk
- to a kind of canter, to a full gallop.
- Woman: On the other hand some elements are really symbolic.
- Like the felled enemies that you were talking about before.
- I don't think were meant to assume that
- there were actually just four people who died in this battle--
- that's the number we see,
- but clearly that's symbolic of many more.
- Man: The middle register shows a line of soldiers readied for battle.
- They are in full garb.
- They are wearing helmets and
- these helmets have again been found in the so called "Royal" tombs.
- Woman: What's wonderful about these soldiers is their regular placement
- that gives you a real sense of an army that is sort of marching along.
- Man: Well you get a sense of order
- you get a sense of structure,
- you get a sense of real discipline.
- But towards the middle of that register
- you see the actual battle taking place
- and you see these soldier victorious slaying their enemies.
- On the right side of that middle register
- you see soldiers that are perhaps being captured.
- Woman: And our eye in the top register goes immediately to
- the large figure at the center
- which is obviously once again the king.
- His head, again, breaks the decorative border along the top.
- On the left, a chariot and soldiers,
- and on the right, other soldiers or attendants
- bringing to the king prisoners of war.
- And we can tell these are prisoners of war
- because they are naked, they've been stripped
- and they are wounded and bleeding.
- Man: So there is a sense of their humiliation, their enslavement,
- and the great victory of the king.
- It's interesting to look closely at
- the stylistics conventions of the rendering of the figures.
- Just about everybody is seen in perfect profile,
- we see one eye, and that one eye is not so much
- looking forward as looking out.
- Woman: Right it's sort of frontal on the side of the face.
- Man: That's right, in a way that is familiar from Egyptian art.
- We see the shoulder squared with the picture plane
- and we see feet pushing in one direction
- rather than being seen in perspective.
- Woman: So we can use our visual detective work,
- but there still so much that is a mystery.
- Man: What it does tell us though,
- is that the way that we tell a story,
- the way that we tell one over time,
- the way that we organize our society.
- Even now, in the twenty-first century
- has a lot in common with the 3rd millennium BCE.
- (piano music)
Be specific, and indicate a time in the video:
At 5:31, how is the moon large enough to block the sun? Isn't the sun way larger?
|
Have something that's not a question about this content? |
This discussion area is not meant for answering homework questions.
Discuss the site
For general discussions about Khan Academy, visit our Reddit discussion page.
Flag inappropriate posts
Here are posts to avoid making. If you do encounter them, flag them for attention from our Guardians.
abuse
- disrespectful or offensive
- an advertisement
not helpful
- low quality
- not about the video topic
- soliciting votes or seeking badges
- a homework question
- a duplicate answer
- repeatedly making the same post
wrong category
- a tip or feedback in Questions
- a question in Tips & Feedback
- an answer that should be its own question
about the site
Share a tip
Suggest a fix
Have something that's not a tip or feedback about this content?
This discussion area is not meant for answering homework questions.