Jean M. Evans - The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple

The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...61

The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture

This book examines the sculpture created during the Early Dynastic period (29002350 BC) and originating in Sumer, a region corresponding to present-day southern Iraq. Featured almost exclusively in temple complexes, some 550 Early Dynastic stone statues of human figures carved in an abstract style have survived. Chronicling the intellectual history of ancient Near Eastern art history and archaeology at the intersection of sculpture and aesthetics, this book argues that the early modern reception of Sumer still influences ideas about this sculpture. Engaging also with the archaeology of the Early Dynastic temple, the book ultimately considers what a stone statue of a human figure has signified, both in modern times and in antiquity.

Jean M. Evans is a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Getty Foundation, The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, and the Warburg Institute of the University of London. She was the co-organizer of the international exhibition Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. and co-editor of its corresponding publication.

The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture
An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple

Jean M. Evans

University of Chicago

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York , NY 10013-2473, USA

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107017399

Jean M. Evans 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Evans, Jean M.

The lives of Sumerian sculpture : an archaeology of the early dynastic

temple / Jean M. Evans.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-107-01739-9

1. Sculpture, Sumerian. 2. Figure sculpture Iraq Sumer.

3. Temples Iraq Sumer. 4. Archaeology and art. I. Title.

NB80.E93 2012

732.5dc23 2011050310

ISBN 978-1-107-01739-9 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the many individuals and institutions that made this book possible.

I thank the following generous institutions whose fellowships gave me the time to think about, write, and revise my ideas: the Getty Foundation, the Warburg Institute of the University of London, and The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq.

I thank McGuire Gibson for inviting me to participate in the final publication of the Inana Temple excavations at Nippur and for encouraging me to incorporate unpublished Inana Temple materials into my study. I also thank Clemens Reichel for permitting me to cite unpublished data from the Diyala Excavations; this material is currently being prepared for publication on the Diyala Virtual Archive (www.diyalaproject.edu).

I thank the following individuals who read this manuscript at various stages and provided much-needed encouragement, inspiration, advice, and guidance: Robert D. Biggs, Madeleine Cody, Paul Collins, McGuire Gibson, Tom Hardwick, Oscar White Muscarella, Edward L. Ochsenschlager, Holly Pittman, Vincent van Exel, Karen Wilson, Christopher Woods, and Richard L. Zettler.

I thank Henry Taylor for the many discussions on Early Dynastic sculpture and Lauren Crampton and my Bryn Mawr College graduate seminar for their foray into Sumer.

David Morgan sent me the page proofs of his introduction to Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief, and Paul Taylor sent me the text of his lectures, Gombrich and the Idea of Primitive Art and Henri Frankfort, Aby Warburg and Mythopoeic Thought. Tom Hardwick sent me his article Five Months Before Tut: Purchasers and Prices at the MacGregor Sale, 1922. Tom Urban sent me the page proofs for Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond. I thank all these individuals for sharing these materials.

I thank Kashia Pieprzak for her assistance with nineteenth-century French terminology.

I thank the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for supporting me during the early phase of this study. In particular, I thank Kim Benzel for her encouragement and Jean-Franois de Laprouse for his assistance with the examination of Early Dynastic sculpture.

Of course, all errors are my own.

The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq also provided financial support for the images reproduced in this book. For assistance with images, I would like to thank, in addition to many of the above-mentioned individuals, Mark Altaweel, Alessandra Biagianti, Pascal Butterlin, Nina Cummings, Catherine Giraudon, Thomas Haggerty, Ian Jenkins, Michael Kane, Kathleen Langjahr, John A. Larson, Lia Melemenis, Philippe Mennecier, Sean Molin, Michael North, Neal Stimler, Emma Stower, and Sarah Uttridge. I also thank the Directorate General for Antiquities and Museums of Syria for permission to reproduce images of objects in the collections of the National Museums.

Some of the ideas in this book were presented on the following occasions: History of Scholarship Seminar, Warburg Institute, London; Visual Culture Colloquium, Bryn Mawr College; Mari, ni est ni ouest? 75 ans de dcouvertes archologiques Tell Hariri (conference), Damascus; Eastern Tigris Region Colloquium, Heidelberg; Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) annual meeting, New York; Sixth International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE), Rome; Ritual in the Ancient Near East seminar, Columbia University; the Charles K. Wilkinson Lecture Series, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; College Art Association (CAA) annual conference, Boston; American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) annual meeting, Philadelphia. I am grateful for the constructive feedback that I received.

I thank Cambridge University Press for accepting my manuscript for publication and for the care with which Helen Wheeler, James Dunn, and the production team transformed it into a book. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Donald P. Hansen first encouraged my interest in the Early Dynastic period. From him, I learned that art historical inquiry should be situated in both the archaeological record and a firsthand knowledge of fieldwork. I often wonder what he would have thought about the way I have applied his lessons; I miss the chance to ask him.

Without the support of my husband, Vincent, there may have been a book, but certainly there would have been none of the joy. And thank you, Marieke Dahlia, for your lovely in- and ex-utero companionship during the final revisions and production of this book.

Next page

1234567...61

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple»

Look at similar books to The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Anne J. Cruz (editor)

Early modern Habsburg women : transnational contexts, cultural conflicts, dynastic continuities

Hui Wang

The History of Ancient Egypt: The Early Dynastic Period

Wilkinson

Early Dynastic Egypt

Nexon Daniel H.

The struggle for power in early modern Europe: religious conflict, dynastic empires, and international change

Crawford

The Sumerian World

Bard

An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Berman

The priest, the prince and the pasha: the life and afterlife of an ancient Egyptian sculpture

Nicholas Postgate

Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History

Jodi Magness

The Archaeology of the Holy Land

Dilip K. Chakrabarti

India: An Archaeological History: Palaeolithic Beginnings to Early Historic Foundations

Dr Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio

Sculpture Collections in Early Modern Spain

Israel Finkelstein

The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel

Discussion, reviews of the book The Lives of Sumerian Sculpture: An Archaeology of the Early Dynastic Temple and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.