Author Archives: henebry

Lecture 3

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The Contrasting Art of Two Ancient Empires

Reading: Strickland pp 6-11: the art of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt

Reading: Joshua Mark (World History Encyclopedia), “A Brief History of Egyptian Art”

Reading: British Museum, articles on the Assyrian Empire and Ashurbanipal, both written in connection with a 2018 exhibit. (The first was written by curator Gareth Brereton; the second is unsigned.)

Optional: for additional information on the Assyrians, check out British Museum articles on the library and palace gardens of Ashurbanipal. (The first of these articles was written by curator Jonathan Taylor; the second is unsigned.)

Viewing:

Confused? I’m also struggling to keep straight the difference between Ashurnasirpal and Ashurbanipal. –nasirpal came first, followed 200 years later by –banipal. –banipal is the scholar-warrior whose library preserved key Babylonian texts like the Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh. But -nasirpal’s palace was better preserved (link) than -banipal’s was (link) so when the British Museum tries to reconstruct what life was like for the more intesting scholar-warrior -banipal, they make use of artistic reconstructions of -nasirpal’s palace (link).

Writing: choose one of the artworks on display in the Boston MFA’s Egyptian or Ancient Near East galleries (linked above).

  1. Download the image to your computer, then add the image to a comment you post.
  2. In your comment, use what you learned from the reading to comment on the artifact: “This stylus is unusual for the Middle Kingdom in that …” or “This bas-relief is typical of Assyrian decorative art in that ….” Include a parenthetical page ref.
  3. Before posting, check to see if someone else has already commented on the same artifact; if so, post your response as a reply to theirs, whether in agreement, in disagreement, or by calling attention to a different aspect of the same artifact. Don’t bother to attach the image a second time.

Lecture 2

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Sacred Spaces, Holy Hours

Reading: Strickland, pp2-11. (“Strickland” refers to one of the books on order at the BU Bookstore, The Annotated Mona Lisa, by Carol Strickland.)

Documentary to watch: Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams: link.

Video to watch: “New Light at Newgrange,” published to YouTube by the Irish National Monuments Service.

Writing: Read HW guidelines linked here. Then respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

  1. In the first 10 minutes of his documentary, Herzog focuses a lot on his process (i.e. what it was like to move about and film in the cramped cave), rather than on his subject, the cave paintings themselves. What purpose does this serve? In answering, point to a particular moment or (better) quote the film’s narration as evidence of your insight.
  2. Several times Herzog’s documentary presents evidence that bears hibernated in this cave. In what way is this relevant to the human practice of decorating the cave with art? You’ll have to speculate to answer this question, but bolster your hypothesis by pointing to specific evidence from the film where evidence of early humans is juxtaposed with bear sign.
  3. About an hour in, Herzog makes reference to the culture that produced the Venus of Willendorf. Name one key way in which that art differs from the Chauvet cave art—and speculate a bit about what this suggests about those two cultures’ differences. Try to ground your speculation in visual detail!

Further Reading: After attending lecture, if you want to learn more from the sources that informed my analysis, here are two key authors, Harari and Eliade, indexed by idea. Selections from both authors are available on Blackboard.

  • The “Cognitive Revolution”: Harari pp1-12
  • The “Agricultural Revolution”: Harari pp12-18.
  • Shared fictions/imagined orders/myths as fundamental to human culture, inescapable “prison walls” that shape our thinking: Harari, pp18-30.
  • Hierophany: Eliade.