Ancient Mesopotamia: Did you mean...?

Art, along with language, is perhaps the best way to see the connections between the ancient peoples we label as Celts who lived in Iron Age Europe. There were great variations across time and space but common features of ancient Celtic art...

Ancient Persian culture flourished between the reign of Cyrus II (The Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and the fall of the Sassanian Empire in 651 CE. Even so, the foundations of Persian culture were already...

The sculpture of the ancient Celts between 700 BCE and 400 CE is nothing if not varied as artists across Europe developed their own ideas and borrowed what interested them from neighbouring cultures. Early Celtic stone and wood sculptures...

The figure could be an aspect of the goddess Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love and war, or Ishtar's sister and rival, the goddess Ereshkigal who ruled over the Underworld, or the demoness Lilitu, known in the Bible as Lilith...

The upper halves of terracotta plaques, depicting a male figure (on the left, who has a long beard) and a female figure (on the right, with bare breast) wearing a horned headdress (symbol of divinity) and appearing to hold a long bar in both...

Mari was a city-state located near the west bank of the Euphrates River in Northern Mesopotamia (now eastern Syria) during the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age. One of the earliest known planned cities, Mari is believed to have...

A text known as The Lay of the Harper, dating from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) encourages its audience to make the most of the time because death is a certainty: Make a holiday! And do not tire of playing! For no one is allowed to...

This is a diorite mina weight in the shape of a sugar loaf. The inscriptions state that this was a copy of a weight made for Nebuchadnezzar, following the standard of Shulgi, "The Old Sumerian King" (reigned 2094-2047 BCE). It was the property...

Only the upper half of this clay statue of a naked woman has survived. It represent a worshipper. Traces of red color (original paint) can still be seen. She has an elaborate hair style and wears a 4-strand necklace and broad bracelets. Date...

This boundary stone, or kudurru, records a gift of land made by Eanna-shum-iddina, governor of the Sea-Land in Southern Babylonia. The receiver's name is Gula-Eresh. The text ends with a series of curses on anyone questioning the gift or...