Around 21-20 centuries BCE Ur was restored as the Sumerian capital and the III Dynasty of Ur begun under the rule of the king Ur-Nammu. However, the Akkadian influence was clearly detectable in the art of this period: although force and power returned to the forefront of artistic creation, a softening of the ancestral rigidity in the Sumerian art reflected the influence that Akkadian dominance had left.
King Ur-Nammu must have reigned 18 years and was succeeded by his son Dungi who reigned nearly half a century. Countless monuments whose bricks were sealed with the names of these two sovereigns showed the construction power of both kings. The first concern of Ur-Nammu was to fortify the capital so that it could withstand any attack. The walls of Ur built during this time were almost 25 mt. wide at the base. But this formidable work is by no means the most important building of the Neo-Sumerians. The temple of Sin, the moon-god, was a ziggurat or stepped tower constructed so that the deity could descend from heaven to earth. Most Sumerian cities had similar constructions. These monuments had three to seven levels, each with a smaller base than the preceding, and corresponded to the type of building described in the Bible as the “Tower of Babel”.
The ziggurat of Ur, started by Ur-Nammu, was a three-story tower. The first level was completely solid and stood 65 mt. long by 43 mt. wide with a height of 22 mt. Its walls were slightly inclined. The first floor platform could be reached by three monumental stairs: two laterals alongside the left and right sides of the front façade and a third facing the front and perpendicular to the other two. These three stairs had 100 steps. Above this giant pedestal stood other two overlapping platforms on top of which was the temple for the god. Another temple at the base conditioned as home for the divinity transformed this building as a monumental stair to ascend or descend from heaven. The prophet Jacob, after visiting the land from where his father had came, must had remembered the religious ceremonies and processions carried out in these giant stairs of the Ur’s ziggurat. Today is still amazing to think that these gigantic architectures were made of bricks none of which reaches 40 cm. Such constructions should required millions of these handmade pieces and overcome enormous difficulties to raise the whole building.
We know the Neo-Sumerian sculpture by the findings in Lagash, a city whose sovereigns never had the title of king but were known as patesi or governors. According to ancient lists, the most important was the seventh called Gudea. This patesi, who ruled Lagash for just over 15 years, built temples and palaces and has left us a prodigious series of his portraits that are perhaps the most impressive group of sculptures done by the will of a single individual. Today, we know more than 30 of these statues carved in hard and shiny volcanic rocks: blue diorite and black dolerite. In all, the patesi Gudea appears dressed as a monk in a robe that leaves bare his right shoulder and arm, and always with hands clasped in prayer. The fineness of details like fingers, lips and eyebrows, and some subtly accented muscles on the body’s surface are in contrast to the severe simplicity of the gown. All the statues of the series not only produce an impression of serene majesty, but also of intense religious fervor.
Through the millennia, we know one of the most sacred objects of the treasure of Gudea: the cup of libations that he used in religious ceremonies. It is a stone goblet whose reliefs tell us that, despite the humanization of the gods introduced during the Akkadian domination, the old divine monsters did not completely disappeared. Gudea’s libation cup have two standing dragons holding a spear with their front legs. They are terrifying monsters with snake head, feline body, eagle’s wings and claws, and scorpion’s tail. Both monsters guard a cane on which two serpents twist and whose heads ascend to the rim of the cup as if they wanted to drink from the ritual’s liquid. This sacred symbol is already very similar to the Rod of the Greek Asclepius which was used by ancient physicians, and that still remains with some modifications as an emblem of pharmacy and medicine.
Excavations of ancient Lagash have provided several statues that don’t represent portraits of kings but young men with face and head fully shaved, as well as various representations of women. The most important of all these female representations is a figure with hands joined in the same position as those of Gudea and dressed in tunic and mantle adorned with embroidered ribbons, and whose curly hair is covered with a cloth headdress also attached with a ribbon. The majestic air of this image and the mystical sense that emerges from it accentuated by the prayer position of her hands have led many archaeologists to identify her as the own Gudea’s wife.
The Neo-Sumerian statues show us a completely original aesthetic interpretation of the human face, like the head of a princess found in Ur in 1927. She wears a smooth circular headband, like a gold ring, to hold her hair and, despite missing the bottom of her face, her eyes, inlaid in lapis lazuli, look at us with a millennial expression of astonishment.
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Rod of Asclepius: Also known as the Staff of Asclepius (sometimes also spelled Asklepios or Aesculapius) and as the asklepian. In Greek Mythology refers to a serpent-entwined rod wielded by the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicine. The symbol has continued to be used in modern times, where it is associated with medicine and health care, yet frequently confused with the staff of the god Hermes, the caduceus, which in contrast has two snakes intertwined around a staff and surmounted by wings.
The Artistic Adventure of Mankind 