Tripod vessel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This ceramic vessel is a deep bowl that stands on three legs. It is made of red clay and has geometric decorations below the rim and on the outside of the legs. It was excavated at Tall-i Shogha, a cemetery site in Fars, Iran. No records exist of its exact findspot, but later excavations have found similar vessels in graves there. Fars is poorly documented in the Late Bronze Age, and it remains an open question to what extent the people living there were pastoral nomads or sedentary farmers. In either case, they seem to have buried their dead in cemeteries and provided them with grave offerings, primarily metal objects and ceramics. It is difficult to say what purpose this bowl served, or even to determine whether it was a special funerary item or an object of everyday use.

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