Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, Diplomacy
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Opening November 18 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the landmark exhibition Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. will focus on the extraordinary art created as a result of a sophisticated network of interaction that developed among kings, diplomats, and merchants in the Near East during the second millennium B.C. Approximately 350 objects of the highest artistry from royal palaces, temples, and tombs – as well as from a unique shipwreck – will provide the visitor with an overview of artistic exchange and international connections throughout the period.
Exhibition Overview
Beyond Babylon will begin with the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000 – 1600 B.C.), when a rising elite class sought precious materials and objects fashioned in styles that reflected contacts with foreign lands.
Next, the exhibition explores the movement of both people and ideas. Trade, booty, and diplomatic gift exchange provided the means for the circulation of precious goods. The emphasis in this section will be on the complexity of interaction, addressing the individuals who traveled – traders, diplomats, soldiers, craftsmen, and other specialists – and the ideas, techniques, and traditions that intermingled.
The transition to the Late Bronze Age coincides with the arrival in the middle of the 17th century B.C. of the Hyksos, a nomadic Semitic people who invaded Egypt and ruled briefly before the beginning of the New Kingdom. During their 100-year rule, new ideas were introduced into Egyptian art.
The great palatial centers of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600 – 1200 B.C.), catalysts for the movement of people and ideas, are the focus of the next portion of the exhibition. The sites of Qatna and Ugarit in Syria are of exceptional importance, and finds from these two centers will be highlighted in order to show how they interacted with the greater Late Bronze Age world.
Much of what we know about the international relations of the Late Bronze Age comes from the site of Amarna in Egypt, where an important archive of royal correspondence from the 14th century B.C. was found. The so-called Amarna letters describe the diplomatic relationships between the Egyptian court and its counterparts throughout the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.
These far-flung connections and their artistic impact are most dramatically visible in the goods recovered from a shipwreck found near Uluburun off the southern coast of Turkey, which will form the core of the second half of the exhibition. Because all of the ship’s contents sank to the seabed, the remains of the wreck are a veritable time capsule of late second millennium B.C. trade relations. The cargo included hippopotamus ivory canines and incisors, along with copper and glass ingots, golden jewelry elements, and seals from Mesopotamia, Mycenaean Greece, and Egypt – one a rare golden scarab of Nefertiti.
The exhibition will conclude with a presentation of precious vessels of gold, glass, faience, and stone as well as elaborately carved ivories that were prized as royal gifts. In their style and imagery, these objects display the artistic impact of the complex exchanges that took place across the region during the 14th and 13th centuries B.C.
The intensity and sophistication of these interactions resulted in a true “international age,” in which the exchange of luxury objects played a key role and influenced greatly the artistic legacy that would continue into the following millennium. — www.metmuseum.org
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