Images

The Lion Gate at Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire. The gate, dated to the 13th century BCE, was flanked by two towers. The head of the lion on the left had already been broken away in antiquity. It has been reconstructed in 2011...

The Sphinx Gate at Alacahöyük (the site of a Neolithic and Hittite settlement in central Turkey) was built in the 14th century BCE. It was the south entrance of the city and was fortified with towers. It was flanked by sphinx protomes sculpted...

This clay tablet dates back to the reign of the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great, who ruled Iran between 550-530 BCE. The cylinder describes the king's peaceful capture of the city of Babylon in the year 539 BCE and he how built the main temple...

Here the goddess Aphrodite/Venus is surprised as she bathes, her water jar resting under her left thigh. She crouches naked and attempts to cover herself with her arms and expressive hands. Her beautiful head, with its top-knot hair style...

From the mountain region; found in a hoard with 4 other similar figurines. The hands might have held a weapon. From Gezzine (Jezzine), modern-day Lebanon. Middle Bronze Age, 2400-2000 BCE. (The British Museum, London)

This extraordinary statue is one of the earliest large-scale representations of the human form. It was found as part of a cache of up to 25 statues buried in a pit under the floor of an abandoned house. All of these statues have naturallistically...

These 2 small fragments once belonged to a large clay tablet inscribed with a duplicate of the Cyrus Cylinder text. They were identified among The British Museum extensive collections of clay tablets in December 2009 and January 2010. The...

This extraordinary statue is one of the earliest large-scale representations of the human form. It was found as part of a cache of up to 25 statues buried in a pit under the floor of an abandoned house. All of these statues have naturalistically...

During the late 3rd millennium BCE, the area of the middle Euphrates developed a distinctive regional culture. Between 1963-1973 CE, an international rescue mission excavated a large number of sites in this region which were threatened by...

This fine decorated pottery takes its name from the modern name of Tell Atchana, Alalakh. It was defined by the excavator Sir L. Woolley as a locally produced variant of the so-called "Nuzi ware", a similarly fine and elaborated decorated...