Ancient Near Eastern Art: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v ...

menting their manifold beliefs, interpretations,
and fears. Ancient Near Eastern
art and textual material eloquently reveal
how over the millennia these people resolved
their need to relate to and placate
the ever-present spirits and deities that
manifested themselves in nature and in
daily life.
The gold necklace (fig. 19) is a good
example of how decorative and spiritual
functions were often combined. It is composed
of double and triple strands of
The peoples of the Near Ea st, hollow beads with seven pendants, each
like those of other cultures, were in the form of a deity or a symbol of a
preoccupied with the world ( of deity. Although apparently complete, the
eternally mysteriouspiritual I and reconstruction of the more than two hundemonic
forces. Their artisti ic dred pieces is modern, so the original
impulses were largely expre, ssed position of each element is not absolutely
in conceptualizing and doci J- certain. The two horned females in long
flounced dresses most probably represent
Lama, a protective goddess; the
central disk with rays emanating from a
boss represents Shamash, the sun god;
the crescent, the moon god, Sin; and the
forked lightning symbol, probably Adad,
the storm god. The two disks with granulated
rosettes may be purely decorative.
While no other elaborate example exists
in complete form, wall reliefs depict
Assyrian kings of the first millennium B.C.
wearing necklaces like this one with pendant
divine symbols, indicating that they
were to be worn by royalty. The necklace
was most probably apotropaic-that is, it
protected the royal wearer from harm.
Similar individual elements excavated at
Larsa in Mesopotamia lead us to assume
that this necklace was made in the early
19
20