Dish

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This dish has a flat base and a straight rim. A small handle in the form of a horned animal head rises from one side. The dish is made of grey clay, and wheel lines on the interior indicate that it was made on a potter’s wheel. This dish was excavated at Tepe Sialk, near Kashan in central Iran. Sialk was the site of a fortified town, constructed in the early first millennium B.C. Several hundred yards from the town there was a large cemetery, called Necropolis A by the archaeologists who discovered it in 1934. The graves were pits lined with stones, and in addition to the bodies of the dead they contained mainly ceramic vessels such as this one, along with metal weapons and jewelry, and occasionally cylinder seals. Possibly this dish was used in a funerary banquet or ritual before it was placed in the grave; the base suggests, however, that it was designed for use on a flat surface such as a table, meaning its primary intended purpose was for dining. Regardless, its burial in the cemetery shows that drinking was an important part of life and death in Iron Age Sialk.

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