Download The Ancient Near East

Ivory, faience, glass, stone vessels and imported pottery from
sites in the Levant demonstrate the variety of exotic objects that
accompanied the growth of trade, prosperity and political power
during the second millennium BC. Painted Aegean-style fresco
fragments from the palace at Tell Atchana demonstrate the spread
of art and ideas between the Aegean and the Levant.
collections and the Museum’s archetypal Randolph Sculpture
Gallery. The Ashmolean is uniquely placed among Britain’s
museums to bring out the remarkable cultural and technological
achievements of this ancient region, and to illustrate the farreaching contribution and continued legacy of the Ancient Near
East within today’s world.
One wall of the gallery will be dedicated to a display of the
Ashmolean’s carved marble reliefs, dating from the period of the
Assyrian empire (900–600 BC). These came from the ruined
palaces of Nineveh and Nimrud. Often they commemorate the
achievements of their rulers - and their impact on neighbouring
peoples and provinces. Among the finds from Nimrud are
elaborately carved ivories taken by the Assyrians from kingdoms to
the west, either as tribute or spoils of war. They reveal that conflict
between regions had joined travel and trade as the catalysts for
exchange of technologies and cultural traditions.
The ambitious redevelopment gives us the opportunity to set this
important collection in ideal surroundings and develop its already
valuable role as a learning resource. The Ancient Near East Gallery
will occupy a key position in the Ancient World gallery sequence,
in close proximity to the Egyptian, Aegean, and Classical Greek
The Ancient Near East
A new gallery for the Ashmolean Museum
Vessels made from stone and faience, probably for perfumed oils.
From a Middle Bronze Age tomb at Jericho, 1650 BC
Clay vessels in the shape of bulls from Amlash (NW Iran), 1400-1000 BC.
An Assyrian relief from Nineveh, early 7th century BC, depicting a
soldier escorting captives and loot from a Babylonian city in central
or southern Iraq.
For further information about the Ashmolean Museum,
please contact Tess McCormick, Head of Fundraising
[t] 00 44 (0)1865 288193
[e] [email protected]
www.ashmolean.org
The Ancient Near East Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum
Villages to Empires
From the first farming villages within the Fertile Crescent of the
Levant, tools, plaster vessels, and ornaments give clues to the dayto-day life of settled communities around ten thousand years ago.
A rare plastered human skull from Jericho, with inset cowrie shells
apparently representing sleeping eyes, is the most startling find
from this period, suggesting that these early societies developed
a tradition of venerating their ancestors.
At the heart of the Ashmolean
redevelopment is the opportunity
to transform the way in which we
engage with our visitors and encourage
interpretations of our diverse collections.
A new display strategy aims to bring
out the connections between cultures,
continents and chronologies that
the Ashmolean’s collections can so
effectively offer.
The Ashmolean Museum, as part of the
University of Oxford, has played a leading role
in the field of Ancient Near Eastern archaeology
for many decades. Thanks to a largely
unbroken tradition of excavation work and
scholarship by archaeologists such as Sir Henry
Layard, Sir Leonard Woolley, Sir Max Mallowan
and Dame Kathleen Kenyon, the Ashmolean
has an extraordinarily rich collection of Ancient
Near Eastern artefacts. These provide a
fascinating appreciation of life from the time of
the earliest farming communities to the coming
of Alexander the Great (10,000 - 330 BC).
Decades of scholarly work on the collections
by the lateDr Roger Moorey have made these
India
collections well-known throughoutMughal
the world,
both to scholars and the wider public.
The Ancient Near East is an especially
good illustration of a cultural mosaic of
diverse peoples, languages, technologies
Archive
and traditions. The finds on display in
this new gallery will represent a wide
Lift
span of geography and chronology,
India
Lift
uncovering
the history of a huge area
Late
Art of the
Cyprus
Islamic
World
that stretched from Turkey and the
As part of a remarkable project to redevelop
Asian Crossroads
Levant in the West to Iran in the East.
the Ashmolean, a prominent ground floor space The Mediterranean
Orientation Gallery
Furthermore, this fascinating collection
will become the new Ancient Near East Gallery, in Late Antiquity
Eastern Art
Lift
follows the region’s development over
dedicated to this superb collection. The £61 million
Study Centre 1
Eastern Art
thousands
of years, from the very earliest
redevelopment has been designed by the awardPrint Gallery
Offices
lifestyles
of Neolithic communities to the
winning architect Rick Mather, and will provide 39 new
Print
sophisticated first cities of Mesopotamia and the Levant, and later
galleries, a purpose-built education centre, state-of-the-art conservationStore
Eastern Art
facilities and generous space for major temporary exhibitions.
Print Roomthe vast empires of Assyria and Persia.
Above: The Sumerian King List. A clay prism inscribed
in cuneiform script with a list of Sumerian rulers from
‘before the flood’ to King Sin-Magir of Isin (about
1827–17 BC). Probably written at Larsa, S. Iraq.
Ground Floor
The Ancient World
Cast Gallery
Northern
Europe
Lift
Lift
Greece
Early Italy
Rome & the East
Ancient Egypt
Early
India
Cyprus
Early Greece
Classical
Sculpture
Ancient
Near East
Lift
Ancient World
Orientation
Gallery
Early
China
Entrance
Education Centre
Chinese
Paintings
Gallery
Top: Plastered skull from Jericho. The ‘flesh’
is built up with plaster, and cowrie shells
are used in the eye sockets, apparently in
an attempt to recreate the appearance of a
deceased ancestor. Made in about 7000 BC,
before the use of pottery.
Bottom left: Pottery vessel in the shape
of a man pouring an offering to the gods.
Luristan, Iran, about 800 BC.
Bottom right: Sumerian gold and lapis lazuli
jewellery from one of the famous ‘death
pits’ in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, Iraq,
about 2500 BC.
Around five thousand years ago, the first writing emerged in
Mesopotamia, used mainly for accounting purposes. As writing in
cuneiform script developed, scribes began to record the myths and
histories of their civilisations. From these written sources, in addition
to a wealth of archaeological evidence, we can follow the emergence
of cities in Mesopotamia, and their continuing evolution through the
Bronze Age. The Ashmolean has an impressive collection of cuneiform
tablets and prisms of clay, one of the most representative in Europe.
Tablets from Jemdet Nasr and Kish in Iraq are particularly important.
Tablets from Mesopotamia span a period of around 3000 years, from
the birth of writing in 3200 BC to the Seleucid era. Decipherment
of cuneiform in the mid 19th-century has enabled scholars to read
the numerous inscriptions from the region, often allowing a detailed
reconstruction of the history and literary traditions of the Ancient Near
East. One outstanding example is the famous Sumerian King List,
which mentions the epic hero-king Gilgamesh and references ‘The
Flood’, a parallel of the Biblical account of the great flood.
Key gallery displays will feature finds from some of the most famous
excavations in the history of archaeological research. In the 1920s
and 30s the many mounds of Kish were excavated over a full decade
in a joint expedition led by Oxford University and the Chicago
Field Museum. As a result, the Ashmolean became one of the
few museums in the world to hold items from this important site.
Impressive discoveries at Kish came from a palace and cemetery dating
from around 2500 BC. Some artefacts are of extraordinary quality
and delicacy, such as figures carved in shell and stone, originally set
into friezes that decorated the palace walls. Other highlights of the
Mesopotamian collections include items of jewellery found in the
‘Great Death Pit’ of the Early Dynastic Royal cemetery at Ur.