Middle Eastern Artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection

And the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is more than 7 thousand works that relate to the ancient art of the Middle East. The oldest of them were made in the VIII thousand BC. e. Among the first Middle Eastern artifacts that came to the museum were Assyrian stone reliefs, cuneiform tablets, cylindrical seals. They were acquired in the 19th century and were under the control of the Department of Decorative Arts until 1932, when the museum formed a new department – the Department of Near Eastern Art.

In addition to artifacts found during excavations with the support of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the institution houses works borrowed for a long time from other museum collections. The exhibition is arranged in such an order that the viewer can get acquainted with the art of the Middle East in chronological order, as well as learn about the connections with the art of neighboring cultures. Many of the exhibits cover several topics at once: magic, medicine, and the relationship between art and text.