HST110
Lesson 2
The first artifact I chose was the Processional Way of Sphinxes from the Louvre’s antiquities
collection.
These sculptures demonstrate a host of traits of the ancient Egyptian culture.
The Sphinxes
display a society that held their religious tenants as important parts of their culture in order to dedicate
enough time to produce them.
They required the creators to be greatly skilled at sculpture, particularly
stone work that requires both a great deal of precision and time, as well as specialized tools to carve the
stones.
The Processional Way of the Sphinxes were used as protective icons that guarded the entrance
of Egyptian temples. ("Panoramas | Musée du Louvre")
The second artifact I chose, were the cuneiform tablets from ancient Sumer.
These tablets are
an important marker on the road of human civilization and relate just how vital ancient Mesopotamia
was to world civilization.
The cuneiform tablets, made of clay, date back to 3500 BC and display the
oldest forms of written language.
While the tablets themselves didn’t require a highly specialized skill to
make, the reed stylus’s that made the symbols that appear on the tabled did.
Along with the production
of the stylus, the writer required the knowledge of how to produce written language by pressing the
stylus into the wet clay.
These tablets were used to pass down information, specifically religious stories,
to later generations and thus were key to the growth of Sumerian society. ("Ancient Mesopotamia: This
History, Our History")
