Ancient People and Cultures

Egyptian stele fragment showing Nefertiti and Akhenaten

New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, ca. 1345 BCE

This is one of several figurines that have been unearthed from miniature burial pits located throughout the ancient city of Vani, which once served as the religious, cultural, and administrative center for the Kingdom of Colchis. Each figurine was crafted from bronze or iron, adorned with tiny pieces of jewelry, wrapped in a burial shroud, and then placed in its own special "grave" beneath a temple.

Above: one of the burial figurines from ancient Vani

As this article describes:

Seven metal figurines, dating to 300–200 BCE, have been discovered both in and near sacred structures at Vani. Adorned with gold jewelry and apparently wrapped in decorated garments, the figures were carefully buried in a way that seems to mimic the human burials at the site.

Above: close-up of another burial figurine from Vani, in this case depicting a satyr with a golden torque

The adornments on each figurine also mimic some of the jewelry and burial garments that have been found in human graves at Vani:

One figurine has a head with disproportionately large features, a low sloping brow, and an elongated torso with bowed arms and stiffly rendered legs. Most striking is its lavish gold jewellery, some of which reflects the types that were worn by people who were buried at Vani. In addition to gold earrings, a torque, and bracelets, five gold rosettes appear to have been strung around the figurine’s head, and several pendants were found in its chest area.

The figurine was placed between two terracotta tiles and then buried in a small pit that had been cut into the bedrock, thus mimicking contemporary human burials.

The precise function, surely of local religious nature, still remains a subject of discussion. However, it is worth noting that the intriguing practice of burying such figurines in a ritualistic manner appears to be specific to Vani during its phase as a sanctuary city.

Above: the figurine on the left is decorated with a pair of earrings, bracelets, a torque, and a crown of gold rosettes

As I've mentioned before, the Kingdom of Colchis covered most of what is now western Georgia, and the Colchians themselves were famous for their skill as goldsmiths. To the ancient Greeks, Colchis was also known as the homeland of the fabled Golden Fleece, where the story of Jason and the Argonauts took place.

Above: more of the burial figurines from Vani

Sources & More Info:

John Paul Getty Museum: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani

Fitzwilliam Museum: Ritual

Journal of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies: Vani: an Ancient City of Colchis (PDF)

"In cuneiform, the word ‘midwife’ is written with three logographic signs – or signs that stand for whole words – meaning ‘woman’, ‘inside’ or ‘womb’, and ‘to know’. Midwives, in other words, were women who knew the inside. Their role had both medical and mythological import. Clay tablets that record medical instructions often feature midwives, like one reddish tablet unearthed from an ancient library in Assur written down in the early first millennium BCE. A lengthy collection of prescriptions for a challenging birth combines spells and medicine. It reads like an instruction manual, explaining how to mix and apply salves and oils, and how to massage the pregnant woman’s abdomen to help move labour along. (...)

Women didn’t just treat illnesses and processes specific to other women; they also served as ancient GPs. Some of the earliest records of female physicians appear in clay tablets from the third millennium BCE, including even their names. Dubildamu may not have used a stethoscope 4,500 years ago, but she is listed in an accounting tablet as an azu munus, which in Sumerian means ‘female physician’. A few centuries later, a woman called Ubartum also carried her proverbial medical bag to visit so many patients that her name appears in no fewer than fifty documents. (Incidentally, Ubartum’s brother was also a physician who was married to a princess, the daughter of King Shulgi.) Women continued to work as physicians throughout the region’s long history, and they may have even composed and used medical texts, including one clay tablet written in the early second millennium BCE to assist with childbirth."

Egyptian amulet

Late period, Dynasty 26, 664 - 525 BCE

A Mummy Mask with a Wig

A 1,000-year-old 'false head' found in Peru that was crafted with real human hair and toxic red cinnabar.

Stylized masks like this one adorned pre-Inca mummies in Peru hundreds of years ago.

This wooden mask, which is decorated with human hair and a textile headband, adorned an Andean mummy up to a millennium ago. Made by an artist of the Chancay people, the mask was also painted red with the mercury-containing pigment cinnabar.

The Chancay were a pre-Inca people who lived along the central coast of Peru in the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1450). A common tradition among the Chancay was the funerary bundle — the end result of wrapping their dead in layers of textiles, vegetal material and animal skin. The bundle was then buried in a pit along with grave goods such as tools, food and figurines. Because the bodies were usually wrapped in a fetal position, however, it was not always clear exactly where the head was located once the bundle was complete.

According to The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, which has this mask in its collection, "false heads" made from textiles or wood were sometimes tied onto the Chancay funerary bundles to act as a focal point for venerating the ancestor.

The mask is roughly life-size, measuring 12 by 8 inches (30.5 by 20.3 centimeters). Chancay funeral masks were not meant to be realistic. Instead, they had simplified features, such as the diamond-shaped eyes; triangular nose; and tiny, U-shaped smile on this mask. The wig was almost certainly made from human hair, according to a microscopic analysis The Walters Art Museum undertook in 2017.

The Chancay artist who made the mask painted it red using cinnabar, a toxic substance that is the brick-red form of mercury sulfide. Cinnabar was frequently used in Andean funerary rituals, and the color was associated with purification and commemoration rituals. But the mask was likely not placed on the outside of the bundle burial, as a patterned impression has been left on the cinnabar of this mask, probably from being wrapped in even more textiles, according to The Walters Art Museum.

Although the Chancay culture is not as well known as the Inca, recent research into the ceramics the Chancay left behind and the tattoos on their mummified ancestors has revealed that they were a complex society with a high degree of artistic talent.

Block Statue of Sennefer

New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1427-1401 BC.

The Nimrud Dogs: The Security System of Ancient Mesopotamia

The Nimrud Dogs, five clay canine figurines found at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nimrud, were only a few of the many startling finds in the region in the 20th century. During the 19th century, expeditions were sent to the Near East to corroborate biblical narratives through physical evidence – but wound up doing precisely the opposite – and later expeditions in the 20th century did the same. The Nimrud Dogs were discovered by archaeologist Max Mallowan in the 1951-1952 season and are among the most interesting and often overlooked artifacts held in museums today. The figurines date to the 8th-7th century BCE, during the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and, like other artifacts from that time, were preserved by the empire’s fall.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire fell in 612 BCE to the invading forces of Babylonians, Persians, Medes, and Scythians. The empire had been expanding in every direction since the reign of Adad Nirari II (circa 912-891 BCE) and grew more powerful under great kings such as Tiglath Pileser III (745-727 BCE), Shalmaneser V (727-722 BCE), Sargon II (722-705 BCE), Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), and Esarhaddon (681-669 BCE) until, by the time of Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE), it had grown too large to manage effectively.

Ashurbanipal was the last of the Neo-Assyrian kings who had the personal power and skill to manage an empire, and after he died, the vassal states recognized their chance to free themselves. The many regions which had been held so tightly under Assyrian control seized on the weakness of the fracturing empire and, banding together, marched to destroy it. All of the great Assyrian cities, many of which had endured for millennia, were sacked and their treasures carried off, destroyed, or discarded at the various sites. The Assyrians had held the region under such a tight grip that, once it was loosened, the former subject states knew no restraint in venting their frustrations and seeking revenge for past injustices. Great cities such as Nineveh, Kalhu, and Ashur were sacked, with Nineveh so thoroughly destroyed that future generations could not even tell where it had been.

Excavations & Discovery

At Kalhu, site of one of the former capitals of the empire, the sands of Mesopotamia gradually covered the ruins, and the city probably would have been forgotten were it not for the prominent mention of Mesopotamian cities such as Babylon and Nineveh in the Bible. In the 19th century, European explorers, seeking historical evidence for biblical narratives, descended upon Mesopotamia and recovered these lost cities. Among these was Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), who was the first to systematically excavate Kalhu, afterwards known as Nimrud.

Layard and the others were sponsored by European organizations and museums who hoped their efforts would uncover physical evidence proving the historical accuracy of the Bible, specifically the books of the Old Testament. These expeditions, however, had a completely different effect than what was intended. Prior to the mid-19th century, the Bible was considered the oldest book in the world and its narratives thought to be original works; the archaeologists discovered that, contrary to this belief, Mesopotamia had created narratives of the Great Flood and the Fall of Man centuries before any of the biblical books were written.

These discoveries increased European interest in the region, and more archaeologists and scholars were sent. When Layard began his work at Kalhu, he did not even know which city he was excavating. He believed he had discovered Nineveh and, in fact, published his bestselling book on the excavation, Nineveh and its Remains, in 1849, still confident of his conclusions. His book was so popular and the artifacts he uncovered so intriguing that further expeditions to the region were quickly funded. Further work in the region established that the ruins Layard had uncovered were not those of Nineveh but of Kalhu, which the scholars of the time associated with the biblical Nimrud, the name the site has been known by ever since.

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Neo-Assyrian gypseous alabaster relief, circa 883–859 BC.

This relief epicting a winged genius (known as an Apkallu or sage). This monumental artwork originates from the Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), located in modern-day Iraq.

Height: 223.5 cm (7 feet 4 inches)