Images

Mural fragment in San Bartolo, Guatemala, rediscovered 2003 CE, presented at the Palacio Nacional de La Cultura, May 2006 CE. Preclassic Maya art.

Jadeite celt, 10-4th century BCE, Mexico, Mesoamerica Metropolitan Museum of Art About 1000 BCE, celts-elongated, elliptical ground stone tools-would acquire meaning beyond their workaday function. When made of greenstones such as the...

This spouted vessel is one of the most elegantly sculpted stone containers in the corpus of Maya art. Its form with the vertical spout parallel to the central axis of the main chamber is known from the late 1st millennium B.C. and is especially...

3-4th century CE, Guatemala, Mesoamerica. Metropolitan Museum of Art A favored vessel type of the Maya lowlands was one made in the shape of a tropical bird, perhaps a cormorant, in the act of catching a fish in its beak. The bird's forehead...

Alexander I Balas was born in Smyrna and ruled the Greek Seleucid kingdom from 152-145 BCE.

This is a detail of the so-called "Peace Scene" of the Standard of Ur. Here, on the left, a man, wearing a flounced skirt, sits on a chair (or stool) and drinks from a cup. Behind him, a man holds (and plays) a lyre; a very similar lyre was...

This is a close-up view of the so-called "Peace Scene" of the Standard of Ur. The scene is composed of three horizontal registers, showing a feast or a banquet. The central figure of the scene appears on the top register, and is depicted...

This is one of the scenes depicted on one of the sides of the Standard of Ur; this is not part of the so-called "Peace and War Scenes" of the Standard. Here, a rearing goat at a small tree or a shrub is flanked by two men. The man on the...

This is one of the scenes depicted on one of the sides of the Standard of Ur; this is not part of the so-called "Peace and War Scenes" of the Standard. Here, at the center, there is what appears to be a tall tree, although its surface is...

This is a detail of the so-called "War Scene" of the Standard of Ur. This detail is the left end of the top register. Here, on the left, a Sumerian soldier stands behind a four-wheeled chariot. He wears a flounced skirt and a leather head...