Furniture element with a monkey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This fragment belongs to a group of carved ivories, mostly furniture elements, probably found at the site of a palace at Acemhöyük in central Anatolia. Like most of the ivories from Acemhöyük, this object depicts imagery borrowed and transformed from Egyptian sources. The delicately incised image on this small flat piece of ivory can be identified by its characteristic cheek ridges and body form as the African guenon monkey. Depicted squatting and holding a jar, the monkey wears a necklace of beads. Its fur is shown with two different textures, a spotted coat on the legs and body and a striated ridge down the back. Monkeys were beloved by the ancient Egyptians, and their representations in Egyptian art show them both as mischievous pets, and as symbols of fecundity and magical sexual powers in the afterlife when depicted on scarabs and amulets.

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