Earring

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These earrings (MMA 33.35.45 and MMA 33.35.46) come from the so-called Great Death Pit, which was probably part of a royal tomb with an almost totally destroyed stone chamber. Laid out in the pit were the bodies of six armed men and sixty-eight people thought to be women or young girls, all adorned with the most splendid jewelry made of gold, lapis lazuli, and carnelian. The earrings are typical of those from the royal tombs. Made from two pieces of gold sheet, each is shaped like a hollow crescent or open boat with raised ends. The crescents were shaped over a bitumen core. Woolley identified these objects as earrings because they were regularly found in pairs beside the skull. He suggested that the pin could have passed through the lobe of the ear. Another possibility, however, is that they hung beside the ear but were attached to a headdress.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.

Metropolitan Museum of Art