THE great and inventive people who settled 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (now part of Iraq), founded one of the world's first major civilizations. But only in this century have scholars come to know the Sumerians with any thoroughness, chipping away at the sites of such ancient city-states as Ur, Lagash and Mari. Last week a U.S. expedition, sponsored by the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, was at work at the site of the holy city of Nippur, the seat of Enlil, god of the elements. There, only 100 miles south of Baghdad, it has uncovered perhaps the finest Sumerian find in 25 years—more than 50 ritual objects, vases, bas-reliefs and statues of the third millennium B.C. (see color).
Steppingstone Towers. The Sumerians introduced writing, and under their rule the arts flourished. Their temples—dedicated to such gods as to Innin, the goddess of fertility, or to Dumuzi, a kind of Sumerian Adonis—were huge edifices of mud brick made splendid by intricate mosaics of colored earth. The temples rose in staged towers much as did the Tower of Babel, and each formed a kind of artificial mountain—a steppingstone by which the gods could commute to earth. But above all, the Sumerians were a kingdom of sculptors who, in seesawing between realism and abstraction, seem almost modern.
A design on a piece of pottery in early Mesopotamian art showing four goats chasing about in a circle gradually was transformed, in later work, into an abstract Maltese cross. On the other hand, early statues of gods merely suggested the figure—the face being left out as if the artists feared to trespass farther—but then gradually moved toward realism. Kings and high priests were realistically portrayed, but ordinary people placed stylized figures of themselves in temples as stand-in worshippers.
Two Minds. The statues uncovered at Nippur portray a cross section of Sumerian society. A priestess standing majestically with a ritual cup in one hand and a branch in the other hobnobs with an old woman with a matronly double chin. A bearded man and his wife sit holding hands in one of the very few Sumerian double statues ever found. A carefully carved woman is made of a translucent green stone not yet identified. Her face is of gold—a metal that was believed to possess purifying properties and was frequently used for the noblest parts of the sculptures, the face and the hands. As in so much of Sumerian art, the facial expressions of the statues tell a story of their own. Some of the worshippers are strained and goggle-eyed; others are composed and serene. The Sumerians were apparently of two minds about their gods: What would they send, affliction or comfort?