Akkad: The King as a God
With the rise of the Akkadian Dynasty (circa 2334 BCE), the cities of Sumer came under dominion of Sargon of Akkad who introduced a new concept of royal power by uniting independent city states in to one vast empire that stretched from his capital at Agade (never found) to the shores of the Mediterranean. One’s loyalty was no longer vowed to their city-state, it was now assigned to a king. By the time of Sargon’s grandson, Naram-Sin, the Akkadian ruler was referred to as the King of the Four Quarters, effectively meaning, King of the Earth, while city governors were called “slaves of the King”. But, rather than destroy or suppress Sumerian art and culture, the Akkadians assimilated it. This pattern of influence and adoption would continue through the rise and fall of subsequent Mesopotamian empires and can be seen in the overlapping pantheons and religious structure, the developing role of government in society, in the daily life of the people, and in the cultures’ architecture and art.
Approximately 100 years after the Akkadians take over, art and government mixed to create a bronze sculpture of an Akkadian ruler. Instead of portraying the gods, as Sumerian art typically did, this is a casting of a mortal king, possibly Namar-Sin himself, rendered in the Sumerian style. The large eyes sockets, once filled with precious stones are there and above them, they emphatically ridged brow so similar to the female head from Warka (see Sumerian Innovations). The face assumed a kindly benevolence in the full and seemingly sensitive mouth, but remains elevated and commanding by virtue of the elaborate and stylized hair and beard. Metalworking as art was coming into its age as a second head, this time rendered from copper, can attest. The same firm simplicity, large eyes and strong bearded jaw evoke a sense of unquestioned leadership. Both heads illustrate the formal portraiture characteristic of the Near East, especially when concerning persons of a high rank.
The Victory Stele of Namar-Sin illustrates the new god-like status of the King. Like the Standard of Ur, the Stele depicts a battle scene, but there they diverge. Where once the figures were of the same size, repeated in rows with rank undifferentiated, now the king’s army varies in size and positioning, all of them with their eyes cast upward toward Namar-Sin who is the tall, regal, central figure. On his head, he wears the horned helmet as a symbol of deification while standing on the heads of two crushed enemy. Another soldier begs for mercy before the king. The figures are portrayed in simultaneous profile, an old Sumerian convention, but here they are freed into individual gesture and emotion. Also depicted is the wooded mountain on which the battle took place, making this the first known landscape in Near Eastern art since the Volcanic Eruption from Catal Huyuk almost 4,000 years before.
Akkadian rule was relatively short, only about 160 years. It ended at the hands of the Guti, a barbarous mountain tribe that dominated central and lower Mesopotamia until the city-states of Sumer reasserted themselves and established a Neo-Sumerian cultured ruled by the Kings from Ur. In approximately 2100 BCE, while the grand ziggurat of Ur was under construction, a sculptor chiseled images of the ruler Gudea in Lagash, one of the only cities to retain its independence during the Guti invasion. The images are sculpted in dolerite, an extremely hard stone that was almost non-existent in southern Mesopotamia and had to be imported which made it rare and costly. Supply shipments consisted of irregularly sized and shaped blocks too small to allow the artist to show the entirety of a figure without altering the proportions. For this reason, standing figures are rarer than seated figures. There are about 20 images in all, sculpted at the request of the king so that his representation could always be present in the temples in supplication to the gods whom he thanked for the prosperity an security of his city.
The statues of Gudea vary slightly from one to the other, each created as if the artist worked with the challenges of the stone rather than fighting against them. In our example, the figure stands in the formal frontal pose descended from the statues of Tell Asmar, hands clasped at his chest. The face, with its characteristic large eyes, ridged brow and set lips, is emphasized over the body which is visually elongated by the almost vertical drape of Gudea’s gown. The artist’s visual illusion may have been necessitated by the medium in which he worked. The short stones often forced the artist to adjust the proportions of the human body, making it look squatted. By drawing the eye up and down with the vertical drape of the gown, he tricks the eye into seeing the image as taller. The statue itself is only 29 inches tall, but the extremely simple contours, the polished dolerite, and the elegant profile enhance the image of the religious and reverent king.
The third Sumerian resurgence was brief. For a little over a century, the kings of Ur ruled a united kingdom. The last king fell to foreign invaders and during the next two centuries, Mesopotamia reverted to the system of independent city states until the rise of Hammurabi and the establishment of the First Babylonian Dynasty in (c) 1900 BCE.
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