Mesopotamia

Three thousand years of cities between two rivers, and then the long argument about who gets to keep them. People wrote here first, though "invented writing" flatters it: the earliest tablets are accounting notes that do not encode grammar, and the overwhelming majority of everything ever written in cuneiform is receipts. The law codes are older than Hammurabi and less merciful as they get later. The kings who look most brutal are simply the ones who carved their own conquests into stone while their neighbours did not. Then the diggers came, and the objects left: Botta and Layard shipping reliefs down the Tigris, Woolley splitting Ur between London and Philadelphia, the Ishtar Gate rebuilt inside a Berlin museum. In 2003 about fifteen thousand things were taken from the Baghdad museum, not the hundred and seventy thousand that got reported, and the larger loss was the sites themselves, pitted by shovels where no camera was pointing. This archive runs from the fifth millennium BC to now, and states for each object where it is and how it got there.

A chronological documentary of 1,000 moments spanning 5600 BC–2026 on Loreline.

Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20

Eras

Seals, Cylinder seals and stamp seals, and the impressions they were made to leave. A seal is a few centimetres of carved stone that produces a continuous scene when rolled across wet clay, which makes it both a signature and a picture. They survive in enormous numbers, they were the single largest category taken from Baghdad in 2003, and museums almost always photograph the seal beside its modern impression so you can read what the object was for.
Statues, Sculpture in the round and the small figures people kept. The Tell Asmar hoard with its enormous eyes, the Gudea statues, Ebih-Il the seated steward, the bronze head from Nineveh, the Warka mask, foundation pegs driven into temple corners, and the apotropaic figures like Pazuzu that were meant to keep worse things away.
Vessels, Everything worn, poured from or carried, and the material where the Royal Cemetery at Ur dominates. Puabi's headdress, the gold and lapis work, the Ram in a Thicket, the Royal Game of Ur, the Standard of Ur, the Warka Vase, the Nimrud ivories, beads and metalwork and glazed ware. On the death pits that produced much of this: human sacrifice is better supported now than in Woolley's day, but his account of a gentle poisoning was overturned by later imaging that found blunt-force trauma, and no cup he described was ever chemically tested.
Tablets, Everything written on clay, which is where this civilisation is loudest. Literary tablets, school exercises, omen compendia, mathematical tablets like Plimpton 322, letters, the map of the world, and the Flood Tablet that George Smith read in 1872. But the honest proportion matters: the overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform is administrative, receipts and ration lists and accounts of barley, and that is the real texture of the record. Also the modern life of tablets: being read, conserved, digitised, seized and repatriated.
Reliefs, Carved stone, and the most spectacular material in the archive. The Assyrian palace orthostats above all: the lion hunts, the siege of Lachish, Ashurnasirpal's winged genii, the Black Obelisk, the Stele of the Vultures, the victory stele of Naram-Sin, the Hammurabi stele, and the lamassu that guarded the gates. Read them knowing what they are: royal self-documentation, carved by the people making the claims, which is why Assyria reads as uniquely violent when its neighbours simply left no comparable record of themselves.
Sites, The places themselves, mostly mounds now. Uruk, Ur, Eridu, Nippur, Girsu, Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrud, Assur, Khorsabad and Mari, and the ziggurats at Ur, Aqar Quf and Choga Zanbil. Aerial and satellite imagery, including the looting pits that only show from above. Also the reconstructions built on top of the ruins, which are their own kind of historical document.
Museums, Where the objects live now, which is the facet that carries provenance because provenance is a question about location. The Ishtar Gate reassembled in Berlin, the British Museum Assyrian galleries, the Louvre Khorsabad court, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, Penn, ISAC in Chicago, the Sulaymaniyah Museum. Galleries, storerooms, conservation labs and the labels themselves. Every object here from the Metropolitan carries its accession number and the museum's own credit line, so a viewer can see how it was acquired rather than only that it is held.
Excavation, The digging itself, then and now. Botta at Khorsabad and Layard at Nimrud and Nineveh in the 1840s, Rassam, Koldewey at Babylon, Andrae at Assur, Woolley at Ur with Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan on site, and current work at Girsu with Iraqi teams. Much of the best material here is not photography at all but the great nineteenth-century published folios, engraved and printed before cameras could do the job, which record objects that were later lost, damaged or dispersed.
Looting, Loss, and what was done about it. The 1991 and 2003 museum losses, the pitted sites, the damage done at Babylon by a military camp, the demolitions at Nimrud and the Mosul Museum, then the seizures, the forfeitures and the repatriations, including the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet. On the 2003 looting the number everyone knows is wrong: about fifteen thousand items were taken, not a hundred and seventy thousand, and roughly six thousand had come back by 2009. The larger and less filmable loss is the looting of unexcavated sites. Note that this is the thinnest facet in the archive, because free imagery of loss barely exists while imagery of possession is abundant.

5600 BC - Stamp seal and modern impression: geometric pattern. 5600 to 5000 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1986.
5600 BC - Seated female. 5600 to 5000 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Leon Levy and Shelby White Gift, 1985.
5000 BC - Loop-handled circular seal. 5th to 4th millennium BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of Lester Wolfe, 1983.
4000 BC - Figurine. 4th to 1st Millennium BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1959.
3600 BC - Conoid seal with pinched apex. 3600 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1985.
3500 BC - Ritual scene before a temple facade Late Uruk ca. 3500, 3100 BCE. The seal impression depicts a procession of three nude figures approaching a schematically represented temple. The first figure is pouring something from one vessel into another, the second stands but is partially obscured by damage, and the third raises an object, likely a vessel, in his clasped hands.
3500 BC - Seal amulet in the form of a recumbent fox. 3500 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, 1886.
3500 BC - Seal amulet in the form of a fish. 3500 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1987.
3500 BC - Drilled cushion-rectangular plaque seal. 3500 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1942.
3500 BC - Drilled hemispheroid seal. 3500 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1983.
3500 BC - Seal amulet in the form of a recumbent bovid. 3500 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Walter Hauser, 1959.
3300 BC - Seal amulet in the form of a bird of prey. 3300 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Walter Hauser, 1958.
3300 BC - Amulet of a lion. 3300 to 2900 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Miss Helen Miller Gould, 1910.
3300 BC - Jar with a spout and punctate decoration. 3300 to 3100 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of the Robert Haber family, 1993.
3300 BC - Seal amulet in the form of a lion's head. 3300 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Walter Hauser, 1958.
3300 BC - Cylinder seal and modern impression: "pigtailed" ladies in front of loom (?); containers with loop handle. 3300 to 2900 BC. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1984.
3300 BC - Seal amulet in the form of a reclining cow. 3300 to 2900 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Walter Hauser, 1955.
3300 BC - Fragment of a bowl with a frieze of bulls in relief. 3300 to 2900 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Alastair Bradley Martin, 1950.
3100 BC - Cylinder seal and modern impression- ritual scene before a temple facade MET DP270679. 3100 BC. Cylinder seal; Stone-Cylinder Seals. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003.
3100 BC - Cuneiform tablet: administrative account with entries concerning malt and barley groats. 3100 to 2900 BC, probably from Uruk (modern Warka). The earliest tablets from Uruk IV, roughly 3350 to 3200 BC, are accounting notations recording commodities and quantities. They do not encode Sumerian grammar, so writing that can record connected speech is a later development. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gift, 1988.
2900 BC - Cylinder seal. 2900 to 2700 BC. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1987.
2700 BC - Duck amulet. 2700 to 2600 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2700 BC - Bead. 2700 to 2600 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2700 BC - Vessel. 2700 to 2350 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1959.
2700 BC - Adze head (?). (?), ca. 2700 to 2600 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2700 BC - Cow amulet. 2700 to 2600 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2600 BC - Bowl. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2600 BC - Rim sherd. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2600 BC - Female head with elaborate hairstyle. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Khafajah. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund and Gifts of Lucy W. Drexel, Theodore M. Davis, Helen Miller Gould, Albert Gallatin, Egypt Exploration Fund and Egyptian Research Account, by exchange, 1950.
2600 BC - Jar fragment with reclining bulls. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2600 BC - Sherd. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2600 BC - Eye inlay for a statue. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2600 BC - Cylinder seal with animal contest and banquet scene. 2600 to 2350 BC. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Nanette B. Kelekian, in memory of Charles Dikran and Beatrice Kelekian, 1999.
2600 BC - Necklace. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Ur (modern Tell al-Muqayyar). Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Dodge Fund, 1933.
2600 BC - Beaker. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2600 BC - Earring. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Ur (modern Tell al-Muqayyar). Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Dodge Fund, 1933.
2600 BC - Female head. 2600 to 2350 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1952.
2600 BC - Ritual vessel or stand. 2600 to 2500 BC, from Nippur. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1962.
2600 BC - Cylinder seal and modern impression: seated goddess before figures carrying boxes, one placed on "altar". ", ca. 2600 to 2500 BC. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1984.
2600 BC - Cylinder seal and modern impression. 2600 to 2500 BC. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1984.
2600 BC - Cylinder seal and modern impression: bull-man, bearded hero, and lion contest frieze. 2600 to 2350 BC. Cylinder seals were rolled across damp clay to sign and secure documents, and the impression, not the stone, was the point. They are among the most numerous surviving Mesopotamian objects and around 5,000 were among the roughly 15,000 items taken from the Iraq Museum in 2003. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Walter Hauser, 1955.
2350 BC - Bowl rim sherd. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2350 BC - Sherd with incised decoration. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2350 BC - Cuneiform tablet- distribution of copper knives MET vs62 70 95.jpeg (color). ), 2350 BC. Cuneiform tablet; Clay-Tablets-Inscribed. The overwhelming majority of surviving cuneiform tablets are administrative and economic: receipts, ration lists, inventories, loans and contracts. Literary texts are commonly estimated at only a few percent of the corpus.
2350 BC - Bowl sherd. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2350 BC - Jar rim sherd. 3rd millennium BC, from Tell Taya. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1972.
2350 BC - Axe head. 2350 to 2150 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Purchase, Mrs. Vladimir S. Littauer Gift, 1969.
2300 BC - Head of a ruler. 2300 to 2000 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1947.
2250 BC - Rectangular plaque seal with stepped pyramidal back. 2250 to 2000 BC. Stamp seals predate cylinder seals and reach back into the Halaf and Ubaid periods, well before the first cities. They were pressed rather than rolled, and they mark ownership and authority on sealings that survive where the sealed goods do not. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874, 76.
2112 BC - Statue fragment. 2112 to 2004 BC. Southern Mesopotamia has no stone, no metal ore and almost no timber. Lapis lazuli came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, carnelian from the Indus, copper from Oman. Trade is not a footnote to this material, it is a precondition. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of W. Gedney Beatty, 1941.

…and 950 more moments.

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MESOPOTAMIA

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