Dallas Museum of Art, Essay Example

Several weeks ago, I paid a visit to the Dallas Museum of Art, located at 1717 North Harwood Street in the heart of downtown Dallas, Texas. Architecturally, the museum building is quite modern in appearance and reminds me of something done by Frank Lloyd Wright. The interior is also modern-looking with big hallways leading to even bigger galleries displaying a wide range of artwork from Africa, the United States, ancient Greece, China, Japan, and the Pacific Islands, such as Tahiti and Polynesia. During this visit, I decided to visit the gallery for Ancient Mediterranean Art, due to a lifelong interest in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia.

In this gallery, there was a peculiar-looking artifact that I did not recognize until I moved closer to the glass enclosure, where a brass plate identified this artifact as a “Pole Top: Gilgamesh with Two Animals,” dated between 800 and 600 B.C.E. and made of one piece of bronze which explains its overall dark color because of a patina. This artifact that measures approximately eight inches in height and three inches in width came from western Iran and according to a guidebook called Gods, Men, and Heroes: Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art which I purchased at the museum’s gift shop, this “Pole Top” or ornament that was probably mounted on the top of a long pole made by the people of Luristan, an ancient civilization that existed at about the same time as the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Hittites in what is now Iran and Iraq, formerly known as the Persian Empire and before that as Mesopotamia, the so-called “Cradle of Civilization” and the “Land Between the Two Rivers,” being the Tigris and the Euphrates, where the present-day city of Baghdad is located.

As described by Anne R. Bromberg, the author of the guidebook, this artifact is what is known as a standard finial, a sort of decorative emblem for military or ceremonial purposes, and is composed of a human figure (Gilgamesh) and two mythological animals that are similar to griffons or an animal with the head of a lion and the body of a dragon. At the base of this object, there is a human face with stylized bird heads on each side and as a solid bronze object is “supported by a form resembling animal legs which in turn rests upon a tripod-like structure with lugs” (34).

But what I found most interesting about this artifact is that it allegedly represents Gilgamesh, the hero of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” written probably sometime before this object was made, perhaps 1000 B.C.E. or thereabouts. Bromberg calls this a “heraldic figure,” meaning that it might symbolize the royal lineage of Gilgamesh or perhaps of the person who owned this object in real life. Bromberg also notes that objects similar to this artifact have been found in Iran and Iraq where the “master of animals motif” with Gilgamesh as the “master” was commonplace (35).

As an artifact made from one piece of bronze, the shape of this “Pole Top” is hard to describe but it is mostly cylindrical at the top with the rest of it being straight or linear. The two human faces (Gilgamesh at the top and the other beneath it) are similar in appearance but are of course stylized. The very bottom clearly shows that it was intended to sit on top of a pole of some kind so that it could be carried in a parade or some other type of ceremony.

When I first noticed this artifact in the gallery, my eyes were immediately drawn to the face of Gilgamesh and the two animal-like figures on either side. Possibly, the relationship between Gilgamesh and the two animal figures is one of “master” over the beasts of the field, in this case horses which were very important to the military during times of war and the farmers that worked the rich soil of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in ancient Mesopotamia.

Since this object was meant as an ornament atop a pole of some kind, it is not finely crafted and appears to have been made in some kind of a mold; it also is non- expressive of a particular human emotion because it was not designed to be viewed up-close like a true piece of art, such as a painting or the bust of a person. Ironically, I was required to read the “Epic of Gilgamesh” in another class several months ago and when I saw the face of Gilgamesh, I thought back on this epic tale which some have compared to the story of Noah in the Old Testament. Also, the purpose of this artifact reminds one of similar objects that can be found as standard bearers or finials in modern-day military parades and sometimes at military funerals.

As a work of ornamental art, this “Pole Top” symbolizes the triumph of Gilgamesh over the natural world and depicts him as a hero of Mesopotamia, either as a military figure or perhaps an icon for the common people that lived in the unknown ancient civilization in which he first appeared some six thousand years ago in the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” Compared to similar objects, this artifact is nothing truly special except that it has managed to survive in one piece for almost three thousand years. If someone else were to view this object, it might be a good idea to read up on ancient Mesopotamia and its art in order to appreciate the object’s significance in ancient history. Of course, this artifact is an original ornamental work of art but like so many other objects from ancient times, it was probably based in concept on older objects that served the same basic purpose.

Works Cited

Bromberg, Anne R. Gods, Men, and Heroes: Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. University of Washington Press, 1997. Print.