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

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
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