Joan Aruz Knihy

This large volume accompanies an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2003, celebrating the artistic achievements of the period during which the first cities emerged in Mesopotamia. The impressive list of international contributors present thematic studies of the major cities of Mesopotamia and their artistic and literary legacy, as well as placing the objects from the exhibition in a social and historical context. Objects include statues, reliefs, animal sculptures, jewellery, plaques, weapons, vessels, seals, and some stunning metal artefacts, many presented in colour.

This study uses seals to examine and plot cultural interactions between the Aegean and Near Eastern worlds during the period of Minoan dominance (c.2600-1360 BC). By identifying distinctive features of seals from Anatolia, Syria and Egypt it is possible to plot geographical interconnections with the Aegean and the Aegean seals with styles influenced by them. The book contains an extensive catalogue of 253 seals.