Bowl

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The most common type of vessel excavated from graves of the Late Ubaid period at the southern Mesopotamian site of Eridu was a shallow bowl, like this one. Typically a band of paint circles the outer rim, with occasional painted decoration—often of a crosshatched design—along the band. The central ground is left blank. On this example, the hatching takes the form of three evenly spaced lozenges, the sides of which are not straight and give the appearance of leaves swirling around the bowl. Toward the end of the Ubaid period in southern Mesopotamia, pottery was less skillfully painted but some of the grave pottery has simple but bold and very effective designs. This vessel was excavated in the Ubaid Cemetery at Eridu (Grave 134).

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