Fogg Art Museum Exhibition Displays Findings of Harvard Expedition to Mesopotamia, and Shows Objects of Past Ages

An exhibition of findings of the Harvard Mesopotamian expedition is being shown at Fogg, and will close on Saturday of this week. Illustrating the progress and results of Harvard's past three years of excavations in Iraq, the exhibition is well in keeping with the great interest which of late has arisen in archaeological research in Mesopotamia. Combining as it does material of both purely scientific and artistic importance, it cannot help but interest those whose minds are open to the past achievements of man.

From very early times the visible remains of the vast empires that centered between the Tigris and Euphrates have been a cause for wonder to the antiquarian--great rock carvings and huge mounds, clearly the sites of deserted cities, had been pious dissertations by travelers even before the time of Marco Polo.

In more recent times those two pioneers in Mesopotamian archaeology, Layard and Botta, conducted the first excavations for scientific purpose in that region, and the result of their findings has been the never ending confirmation and growth of Mesopotamian archaeology.

Here is material for everyone: inscriptions for the philologist, man's life cycle fully illustrated for the anthropologist, and objects of beauty for the lover of art. Whether it be the reliefs of the Assyrians from Khorsabad, the delicate gold and lapis of the Sumerians at Ur of the Chaldies, or the subtle modeled terra cotta of the Houri at Nuzi does not matter much. Each has its distinct and separate appeal.

The site of the excavations carried on by Harvard University in conjunction with the American School of Oriental Research is in the northern section of Iraq close to the present city of Kirkuk. This place which for 3500 years has been a deserted mound was once the flourishing city of Nuzi, the center of a community of people both commercially and artistically minded. Here for the past three years excavations have been going on under the respective directorship of Edward Cheira, Robert H. Pfleffer, and R. F. S. Starr, during which time sufficient area has been laid bare to give an extremely accurate picture of the lives and customs of the people who lived there prior to the destruction and desertion of the city shortly after 1500 B.C. Great quantities of inscribed cuneiform tablets show the completeness and precision with which business records were kept. No business man's file today could be more painstakingly kept, nor his protection against law-suit more meticulously complete than that inscribed on unbaked clay tablets 3500 years ago.

Household untensils of many kinds have been so numerous that here again it is possible to reconstruct with accuracy another phase of their life.

Of the architecture so much can and should be said that this article would not suffice even to begin it. It is of importance, however, to mention that the construction is of mud brick with frequent use of baked brick for pavements, lower hall facings, and water channels.

In the area cleared there are three separate types of building: the private house, the great palace, and the temple. It is in the latter two and particularly from the temple that most material of artistic value has come to light. Here the Nuzians gave abundant and convincing proof of their skill as artisans and of their understanding and feeling as real artists.

First among this class of objects should be mentioned the sculpture in glazed terra cotta. That people in Mesopotamia should at so early a date have mastered the art of glaze and been able to use it with such skill and control is almost as amazing as the perfection of the sculpture itself. Antedating the Assyrian and late Babylonian glazing by many hundreds of years, one finds here a fully perfected technique where might be expected the stumblings of a beginner.

No doubt the prime piece is the figure of a lion couchant in terra cotta with an all over turquoise colored glaze which has in time taken on an irridesence not unlike that of the Han dynasty in China. Here is a boldness of design, a delicacy and subtlety of modelling that makes it one of the great pieces of Babylonian naturalistic without being imitative, and conventionalized without being studied. It has neither the dull realism of much of the late Assyrian works nor the unnatural grotesqueness of many early Sumerian works; coming in the era that it does one finds it a link between early mannerisms and late realism which takes the best from both new and old and emerges a true work of art.

In this same category may be placed the boar's head (loaned by the Iraq Museum). Here again we have real artistry and feeling in the modelling of what was surely, as with the other animal figures, but architectural decoration.

Another lion figure of more elaborate design is worthy of earnest attention. This beast, whose body is covered with red paint and whose mane, head, tail, and paws are in a splendid, firm, yellow glaze, has not perhaps the natural grace of the first one but substitutes for it a force and feeling of austere power that the other lacks. If one allows the imagination to roam one can see here the beginning of the supremacy of realism in Babylonian and Assyrian art. This piece is not the conquest; it is but a preliminary invasion.

Again the animal motif is seen in the bronze censer surmounted by three lions, which in spirit resemble the Babylonian rather than the Assyrian. Though this piece is not of the same importance artistically as those already mentioned, still as an example of a decorated house-hold utensil it is not without interest.

Perhaps the most important piece archaeologically is the bone figure of a god (loaned by the Iraq Museum), tiny in size but executed with great delicacy and feeling. Aside from its purely aesthetic appeal, its similarity to works of the Hittite country makes it very significant.

Those interested in pottery as well as those whose interests are purely anthropological will find the many types of household pottery of considerable interest. One quickly senses that the potter of Nuzi had a feeling for his art that was not bounded by the bit of produce he received in exchange for his ware. Certainly he was a master artisan.

This is not an attempt to enumerate everything that could interest the casual museum visitor or the professional scientific man, since much that is also fine has not been mentioned; but merely a very summary review of those pieces in the Fogg Museum exhibition that cannot fail to interest both layman and specialist.