Jar with paired birds in panels

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This jar has a flat base, squat body, a carinated shoulder, and everted rim. It is made of buff clay, and has dark brown painted decorations in two registers. The lower register alternates geometric decorations, namely crosshatching and vertical rows of circles, with images of birds. The birds have short, bent legs, big heads and long beaks. The upper register has panels whose lower corners are filled with studded triangles, perhaps meant to indicate wooded slopes. The panels each contain one to three suns. Vessels with very similar decoration have been found at Tepe Giyan and Godin Tepe in western Iran. At both sites they come from graves, and it is difficult to say whether these vessels served a ritual purpose or were objects of everyday life (or both). This jar was formerly in the possession of the archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld, who briefly excavated at Tepe Giyan. Herzfeld published the jar as coming from Giyan, but he never provided a full report on his excavations, and it is thus impossible to know if he dug up the jar himself or purchased it at or near the site.

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