Source: Caixaforum Barcelona
"Before the Flood. Mesopotamia, 3500-2100 BC" explores the image the Mesopotamians had of the world in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, which has mostly come down to us through the Bible, the Koran and Greek myths and texts. Rather than simply showing the treasures of the Sumerians, the exhibition speculates on the past and the way it has been interpreted by historians and archaeologists from different periods.
This is the first major exhibition dedicated to a period and a cultural space which were discovered in the late 19th century and are a cause for concern today. Recent wars, invasions and looting have devastated the fragile archaeological sites. The kind of building materials used (adobe and mud), the filtrations of water which have soaked the buildings since Antiquity and saltpetre have seriously damaged the foundations and walls.
Works of art and craft, jewels and ritual objects, texts and symbols show the way of understanding the world and society in the delta of the Tigris and the Euphrates: the divine origin of the city, the clash between the old gods and the new deities, the creation of humanity, the myth of the Flood, the reconstruction of the earth and the birth of culture as a consequence of a pact between gods and men. The Mesopotamian cities exerted a great influence over the Greek and Judaeo-Christian world and were decisive in the emergence of European civilisation. The exhibition pays attention to that connection through the myth of the founding of the first city and the survival of the legends of the Near East in biblical texts.
The exhibition has brought together a unique group of 400 archaeological pieces from leading international museums and collectors, among them the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Oriental Institute in Chicago, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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Teotihuacan. Art from the City of Gods at the Caixaforum Barcelona (exhibition, 2011)
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