Shrine of Inanna

A footprint left in a piece of wet mud brick in Ur 4,000 years ago. Ancient Mesopotamia

Alabaster heads from statues with shell and lapis lazuli inlay Khafaje, Iraq, Nintu Temple level VI ca. 2475-2300 BCE

Western Asiatic Stone Eye Idol, Ca.4000 BC. 

Attractive brown stone Tell Brak Eye Idol consisting of a square body with slight shoulders, a short neck and two incised eyes. 

Size: L: 120mm / W: 100mm

Gudea of Lagash

Paragonite

Mesopotamia (Iraq), city-state of Lagash

Neo-Sumerian period, Lagash II dynasty 2150-2125 BCE

Cosmetic box with handle Ivory Excavated at Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar) Neo-Assyrian/Late Babylonian period, ca. 700-600 BCE

Statue of Gudea of Lagash

Diorite

Mesopotamia (Iraq), probably Tello/Girsu, ca. 2125 BCE

Priestess/Queen Puabi’s gold earrings

2600 B.C.E.

Royal Cemetery of Ur

Mesopotamia

Sumerian Temple Hymn, baked clay, circa between 1800 and 1600 BCE (Old Babylonian), currently located at the Walters Art Museum.

This tablet, inscribed on all four sides, is one of the best preserved copies of the Sumerian hymn to the temple at Kesh.

Bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian Hymn to Ishtar

This tablet from the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh is a hymn to Ishtar, goddess of love, fertility, and war. While the prayer is originally in Sumerian, every other line gives an Akkadian translation (visible in the placement of line dividers after every group of two lines), which suggests that even in antiquity, Sumerian may have begun to be difficult to understand. It is likely that Sumerian was no longer spoken after about 2000 BCE, but it was preserved in sacred and scholarly texts in Mesopotamia for the next two millennia, analogously to the way Latin is preserved in certain genres and scholarly contexts alongside modern languages today. (Source)

Nineveh, Neo-Assyrian, c. 911-612 BCE.

Two winged apkallu figures from Room T of the Northwest Palace, Nimrud Gypsum alabaster (”Mosul marble”) Neo-Assyrian period, reign of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE)

hmmm how could i best articulate my love for this ancient literary work...

Eye Inlay (doubled) - Sumerian or Elamite - lapis lazuli, marble - c.2nd half of the 3rd Millennium BCE

Eye inlay - lapis lazuli, limestone and black stone - Syrian, Early Dynastic Mesopotamian - c.2550-2250 BCE

Child’s left eye inlay - glass - Late Period, Egypt - c.664-332 BCE 

 A pair of child’s eye inlays - glass - Late Period, Egypt - c.664-332 BCE