now you've noticed that we just continued to jump around this fertile crescent area and then what we're talking about is that new groups who succeed over old groups so now here in 1780 bce we are entering the babylonian period and we're going to take a look at an object you have probably heard of before the very famous law code stile of hammurabi so the style ancient near east babylonia the technique this is a stone stile the iconography what do the figures and symbols tell us about what we're looking at well we've got it chalk full of cuneiform writing and it lets us know that this is created for and by hammurabi and it is one of the earliest examples of a written record of a law code in the western world there are 300 laws here addressing everything from personal injury real estate transactions dowries and adultery laws a laws were not equal across the classes but this was meant to keep continuity and a stable society and so this is the kind of thing that would be in the town square you know how you'll put up a flyer this is sort of like saying these are the rules and this is seven feet tall and it's made from an igneous stone called basalt basalt is a volcanic product and it has this you know historic significance because of the laws but we're really interested in it from a artistic perspective so here we've got hammurabi on the left with standing in twisted perspective with one hand raised up in honor of the sun god shamash look at the radiating lines coming off his shoulders what's really interesting is that he's wearing a crown that has horns coming off the side of it and the artist was really for klimt so let's go back and look at naram sims see his sort of an onion shaped crown with the horns coming off the side well the sun god has got what four four different horns coming off of each side this is a form of twisted perspective they're trying to give us information but they don't know how to show us everything we need to see one of the big moments here in the in the history of art are the four shortened arms foreshortening is a way of trying to show depth of space and this is an early attempt at foreshortening in his other arm you see he has the implements of rule the staff and in this case a ring if you can picture a formal portrait of queen elizabeth ii of england when she's shown in her full regalia she's got a scepter a fancy stick and one hand and a sphere called an orb in the other those are the implements of rule this is what lets us know that that is the god now if he stood up he would be taller than hammurabi hammurabi is a human although a deified human and he is shown smaller than the god so if this god were to stand up there would be a great size difference let's take a look at the ishtar gates they are shown here in a restored fashion these are beautiful glazed bricks covered in a ceramic like but not quite ceramic material called fans which is sort of like a powdered glass now making something of this size you are meant to be impressed these gates would have lined a processional walkway and you can see that you are being escorted by all these wonderful animals that go up the walls in registers at the top we've got this stuff it's called crenellation and it's something that we see in uh in castles in the medieval period which is far far away but it's a beautiful kind of detail i want to show you a close-up then so that you can see the high relief in these beautiful bricks so think about brick making with this it's one thing to make all these beautiful regular glazed brick the ones you see in blue but it's something else to plan out the design and the installation of this wonderful lion and it's good to know the closer that we get to africa the more realistic lions become they look pretty ridiculous when you look at lots of northern european images in the later years so these lions form a protective feature they're watchful they never rest so other kinds of interesting animals going up in space these ishtar gates though are a set of controversial things today because they are no longer in the middle east these have been reassembled in a museum in germany when an art object is in its original location we say that it is in c2 these are no longer in c2 and when an object is no longer in c2 it loses its context it is less easy to understand besides the fact that you can debate if it's right or wrong to remove antiquities one of my favorite figures from the ancient world of art is this composite creature known as a llama su we are zooming down now to 720 bce and these are beautiful examples from the citadel of sargon ii these are 14 feet high carved in limestone and what's so great is that they are both a three-dimensional sculpture and a relief they were made as guardian figures that would have been at the entrance gates and we've got a lot of examples because they're very big they're very heavy and even though the original location is no longer there they are no longer in c2 it helps us understand this wonderful art form the composite then showing us the face of a human with the stylized beard and the uh bullhorned crown and the body of a bowl with a great big set of wings let's see if i can find the wings let's go down here do you see the wings okay and so this is a good place to stop and say hey where have i seen this creature before so if you drive down the five freeway take your girlfriend shopping on the weekend she says i want to go to the citadel well the citadel is not just an obnoxious mall off the five is it a citadel is a fortified complex and that's where the origin of these llamas were they were guardian figures at the citadel so here is a 20th century interpretation of the citadel there he is with his crown his beard his wings his body now let's go down and look at the original wings head crown two legs in front two legs in back wait a minute wait a minute what is this fifth leg so here's the deal in order to read lamasu they wanted you to read one two three four legs from the side and then two legs from the front one two three four fifth leg i'm sorry i think that that is wonderful and it it it shows us a conceptual view rather than an optical view i want to show you one of my former students uh this is asher who was visiting a museum in chicago and he had his picture taken in front of one of the llama zoos that is there in the museum and so one of the great joys of my life is when my former students get to travel and then they send me these pictures before we move on i want you to stop the recording and write the definition of style the definition of technique and the definition of iconography in relationship to art history how'd you do style where are we and when are we there right now we're looking at the ancient near east and the last thing we looked at was from the 8th century bce the technique what is it and what is it made out of is it a glazed brick entrance gate is it a stone relief iconography what do the figures and symbols tell us about what we're looking at so we're going to take the iconography individually aren't we we're going to look at each object and look at the figures and symbols and try to determine what it is telling us