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

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In the ancient Near East plant motifs were incorporated into designs on the richly decorated pottery of the prehistoric periods. They continued to be represented, in a stylized fashion, on a variety of objects throughouthe millennia. Favorite designs included sprig patterns, rows of trees, stylized flowers, and chains of leaves and buds. A schematic representation of rows of date palms appears in three registers on a finely carved chlorite vase (fig. 39) of the first half of the third millennium B.C. The date palm of the oases and river areas of southern Mesopotamia and nearby Iran was a major source of food, of timber for light construction, and of fronds for mats. The reed, native to the marshes of southern Mesopotamia, is represented during the Uruk period (3500-3100 B.C.) on cylinder seals, which also depict other plants and palm trees in decorative, nonrealistic designs. In the Akkadian period (2334-2154 B.C.) trees and plants were more realistically combined with natural features to give the impression of actual landscape. An Akkadian seal (fig. 37) shows a hunting scene in which a man seizes a horned animal. Fir trees and mounds with imbricated patterns indicate that the setting is a mountainous region, probably the forest lands to the north or east of Akkad. The ivory carvings from the Neo- Assyrian palaces at Nimrud incorporate many plant forms as decorative elements in the designs. On one example executed in Syrian style (fig. 38) a goat is naturalistically portrayed rearing up on its hind legs and nibbling at the leaves of a highly stylized shrub of intertwined tendrils. The sacred tree was always a popular motif. This imaginary, decorative plant, composed of ornamentaleaves and waterlike tendrils, was repeated many times on the ninth-century B.C. reliefs of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud (see inside front cover). Frequently, attending divinities are shown administering some purifying substance with a date palm spathe and a bucket. The sacred tree was a symbol of vegetal life and fertility-a significance that we attribute to most plant motifs and designs in the art of the ancient Near East. B.A.P. 38 39 32
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