Carinated vase

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This biconical pottery vessel has a sharp edge around its middle where the two halves of the vessel were joined. It also has an abrupt shoulder and a wide, flaring rim. It is made of grey clay using a potter’s wheel, and decorated with several horizontal registers of hatching. This vessel was excavated at Yarim Tepe in northeastern Iran, six miles south of the modern town of Gonbad-e Kavus. Yarim Tepe was a small settlement, inhabited from the Neolithic to the Parthian period, with many interruptions. Very similar vessels have been excavated at Tureng Tepe near modern Gorgan, about 50 miles to the southwest, dating to the Bronze Age. This vessel likely dates to the same period. The similarity shows that these sites were in close contact with one another, perhaps as part of the trade network that linked Mesopotamia with Afghanistan, one of the few sources of tin and lapis lazuli in the ancient Near East.

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