Metropolitan Museum of Art Blog Post

The other week, I took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to explore artifacts and other relics discovered during the Mesopotamian era. After walking through the Ancient Near Eastern exhibit, searching for something to catch my eye, I finally came across this odd wall sculpture of a soldier leading a horse with his left hand. I know this person was a soldier, because he was holding a spear in his free hand, had a sword strapped around his neck, and on his back he had a bow and arrow. The first thing I found intriguing about this hand- carved sculpture, was that the animal and human were depicted as separate entities. Most of the sculptures, statues, and art I have seen thus far from the exhibit, always portrayed the human and animal as one. This was typical during the Mesopotamian time period where there was a very thin line between Gods and Humans, and where they are constantly being juxtaposed together, and represent one entity (i.e. Gilgamesh).

Other pieces of art that I saw illustrated humans with wings like a bird, or a person with the legs of a bull or horse, but this wall sculpture showed human and animal as individuals. The other thing I found appealing from this wall sculpture, was the fact that there were fish involved. This was the first sculpture I found that had fish in it. I do not know whether this was a coincidence, or true meaning behind it. Even more fascinating was the way the fish were situated within the wall sculpture. The fish were depicted swimming in some sort of body of water, in the background. This is the first illustration I had seen that used a background for their piece of work. Perhaps the most amazing part of this image was the extraordinary amount of detail put into this piece of art. It provided so much detail, you can see every scale in the body of the fishes. It is unfortunate, that only part of the image was found and restored, because I would have liked to see what the rest of the picture looked like. Similar to the other artifacts and pieces of art I found in this exhibit, there was plenty of cuneiform writing around the hand carved wall picture.