Belt fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is but one of hundreds of Urartian belts known to exist, all decorated with a variety of scenes—hunts, animals, deities, etc. Here, in panels divided by patterns, lions and bulls are hunted by otherworldly winged creatures. Joining fragments of this belt exist in two other museums. The pieces were dispersed almost a century ago, when a Russian scholar claimed the belt along with other Urartian material derived from a site at Gushi on the northwestern shore of Lake Urmia in northwest Iran. The belt may have been made in the seventh century B.C.

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