Word: mesopotamians
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Important as they may be to art lovers, the cache of mother goddesses and the culture that fashioned them is even more significant for prehistorians. For the glories of Hacilar, predating a recent Mesopotamian find by at least 3,000 years, offer strong support for a long-argued theory: that civilization was not cradled in Mesopotamia and carried slowly north as has been generally supposed, but that the Neolithic farmers and artisans of Anatolia fathered a culture later transmitted to the south...
...design on a piece of pottery in early Mesopotamian art showing four goats chasing about in a circle gradually was transformed, in later work, into an abstract Maltese cross. On the other hand, early statues of gods merely suggested the figure-the face being left out as if the artists feared to trespass farther-but then gradually moved toward realism. Kings and high priests were realistically portrayed, but ordinary people placed stylized figures of themselves in temples as stand-in worshippers...
...written records tell that they brought woolen goods, returning with cargoes of copper, ivory and gold. This suggests that Dilmun acted as middleman between Mesopotamia and the civilization of the Indus Valley in Pakistan. In both places have been found a few peculiar, disk-shaped stone seals. Since most Mesopotamian seals are cylindrical and Indus seals are square, archaeologists have long speculated that the disk-shaped seals were made in Dilmun, the in-between place...
Harran's fortunes rose and fell with shifts of local politics, but its religious importance persisted. The last king of Babylonia, Nabonidus, was so devoted to Moon-God Sin that he tried to make him supreme above all the other gods of the densely populated Mesopotamian pantheon. This religious move was a tactical mistake; the local priests had a vested interest in other gods, and their machinations drove Nabonidus into the wilderness. He came back after a while, but was overwhelmed by Cyrus of Persia...
...camel opera; as a Hollywood camel opera, it looks and sounds like the late hours of a Shriners' convention, i.e., fun in an overloaded fashion. Howard Keel, as the poet who goes from verse to better at the Wazir's court, cuts a tolerable fine figure in Mesopotamian laundry, and he sings like a baritone bulbul. Ann Blyth (see MILESTONES) is the girl and Vic Damone the boy. The music is borrowed din from Borodin, and except for Stranger in Paradise, it sounds like routine Tin Pan Allah. The incidental decorations are eye-filling, though-particularly an albino...