SUMERIAN ART

By: Katie Kozy

ART Sumerian art is mainly about exploring

and supporting the relationships between people, gods, plants, and animals

Sumerian art is represented in many ways

Almost all Sumerian sculptures served as a dormant or ritual equipment for the temples

CLAY Clay was common in west Asia and

stone was not, most of the earliest statues were made out of clay

Its hard to make sharp edges when working with clay, most of west Asia sculptures looked round and soft

When they started carving with stone the kept this round, soft look

ART Sumerian craftsmanship was of marked

excellence from very early times They have the smooth perfection and

idealized features of the classical period of Sumerian art

Painting and sculpture were the main medians used and art was primarily used for religious purposes

CREATED ART A sculpture was set upon a mound and

the platform built to support its crowning shrine was 40 feet high

Sumerian art had 3-dimentional statues made of marble with an obvious hierarchy

Some Sumerian portraits are in marble and others were in

black-grey diorite

ART Invasions of Semitic peoples, present day

Iran and Syria, ended the last Sumerian golden age

Stone, wood, and metal had to be imported into Sumer

The vast royal cemetery at UR has yielded many masterpieces of Sumerian art

Outstanding among these are a wooden harp detailed with gold and mosaic inlay picturing mythological scenes on the sound box

CREATED ART The tallest statues of the vegetation god

almost about 30 inches in height A number of statues and sculptures

were religious and depicted the mother goddess

MORE ABOUT CLAY Sumerian art was complex and ornate with clay being the most abundantly used material

Clay’s qualities determined their style of baked-mud building and the nature of their fine textured pottery

Clay was their most abundant material

ART Excavations have unearthed great skill

and artistry in Sumerian art Sumerian art can easily be separated into ritual objects, state objects, and personal objects Sumerian art forms reflect on the

culture and lifestyle

MORE FACTS ABOUT ART At Lagash a strongly modeled head of

stone portraits a Sumerian man Its large and widely spaced features set

on a heavy round skull are revealed in relief and inlay work of the period

Among the other Sumerian art, one of the most sophisticated was the

cylinder seal

DIFFERENT KINDS OF ART With the assent to power Sargon of

Akkad Sumerian art reached new heights of expression particularly in sculpture

The Ziggurat Temple form was the most striking architectural achievement of the Sumerians

One Ziggurat at Erech extended over an area of half a million square feet

CREDITS Education. Yahoo

Cristalinks.com Historyforkids.org Ezineathicles.com Google images