There is something reassuringly human about the pair of statuettes that stare dumbly from the projection screen during Professor Jennifer Wingate’s ARH 101 lecture. At first I don’t know whether to laugh out loud or to rudely dismiss these apparently crude and comical figures (This is the best you can do when your neighbors, the Old Kingdom Egyptians, were creating sculpture and pyramids of incredible weight and moment?). And yet there is something engaging about these objects that the Great Pyramids never offered. You experience an emotional resonance, a sense of ease emerging from a feeling of connection and familiarity with the artist that created these sculptures.
These statuettes are the product of the inhabitants of what historians term ‘the cradle of civilization’, those city-states that began to emerge between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BCE. They were hand-carved from smooth buttery-colored gypsum and inlaid with shell and black stone. Cylindrical in shape, standing bolt-upright and perhaps 30-inches tall, the figures are recognizably male and female, but offer insufficient detail to enable the viewer to state with confidence that they represent specific persons. Sufficient detail is provided to indicate clothing but it is obvious that these are not great works of art.
Hands clasped at their breasts, heads tilted slightly upward, the figures are frozen in a prayerful attitude. It’s the eyes that grasp and hold your attention-unnaturally large and blankly staring, made of a dark-colored stone different from the rest of the figure; they seem to emit invisible laser beams aimed at the skies. It’s the eyes that give you the first hint of the purpose of these objects, for they are Sumerian votive figures and a reminder of a time in history when art was perceived as spiritually, even physically, instrumental, the potential source of reality-altering energy. The statuettes are not meant to accurately mirror reality or to serve as objects of beauty but instead serve as conduits of spiritual power. They are meant to span that great chasm that separates mankind from god.
Dozens of these sculptures, ranging in size from 12 to 30-inches tall, were found buried beneath the floor of an ancient temple in what is now modern-day Iraq. The men wear belts, fringed skirts, beards and shoulder length hair; the women, long robes with the right shoulder bare. Some figures bear inscriptions with the name of the donor, the god to which they are dedicated or even specific prayer intentions, strongly evocative of Roman Catholic votive offerings and Buddhist votive paintings. I get great pleasure out of the thought of a Sumerian factory producing hundreds of these anonymous votive objects, each waiting to be awakened by the primal religious impulse to approach the divine.
Votive objects serve two purposes: to thank the almighty for a favor granted, or to implore supernatural aid. The statuettes were left in the temples and ziggurats of the Mesopotamians as an expression of an individual’s relationship to the gods and may be one of the earliest expressions of man’s desire to understand himself in relation to the world, and then to give that understanding an artistic manifestation.
It’s comforting to know that we are not so far separated from these ancient Mesopotamians. Each of us strives to make sense of things by framing explanations that sort out our relationship to the world around us. The art objects we choose to surround ourselves with can serve an important role in this quest.
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