The exquisite jewelry likely belonged to an elite woman of the Bronze Age period.Continue reading
The Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest presents the heritage of ancient Mesopotamia in a new exhibition open to the public from Saturday.
“For the first time in Hungary, an exhibition will showcase the art of this fascinating period, the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in Mesopotamia.” said László Baán, Director General of the Museum of Fine Arts. He added that one of the roots of our European cultural heritage also goes back to this region and this period.
He stressed:
fantastic works of art have been acquired from many major European collections, and thanks to this they are able to present in Budapest a comprehensive exhibition the likes of which are only seen once or twice a decade in the world.”
The Kingdom of Gods and Demons. Mesopotamia 1000-500 BCE, which will be open until February 2, 2025, offers an insight into this lost culture through more than 150 loaned artifacts.
Organized jointly by the Museum of Fine Arts and the MTA–ELTE Lendület Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Cylinder Seals and Divine World Research Group,
the core of the temporary exhibition is made up of objects from the cities of Assur, Babylon, Dúr-Sarrukín and Kalhu, excavated in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Many of the artifacts are symbolic of ancient Mesopotamia, some of which have never been loaned out.
Relief depicting a winged deity. Photo: MTI/Lakatos Péter
The 150 works on display come to Budapest from 12 collections in Hungary and abroad, with loans from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, the Musée du Louvre and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the National Museum of Denmark, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and the Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
The exhibition, divided into nine sections, includes palace reliefs, the dragon serpent of the Ishtar Gate, discovered in Babylon, and glazed brick decorations. The displayed miniature cylinder seals, made of various minerals and rocks, depict the Mesopotamian divine world.
A glazed brick relief of a lion with the head of a snake. Photo: MTI/Lakatos Péter
In addition to small statues and amulets of emblematic figures of the demonic world, there are also works of Assyrian and Babylonian kings, and cuneiform sources in Akkadian.
In the final section, the motif and history of the Tower of Babel, linked to the city of Babylon, will be brought to life through paintings.
Via MTI; Featured image via MTI/Lakatos Péter