Pasage to the past

Come lunchtime, around 12 people gather around a long table in one of the art studios of Manarat Al Saadiyat. This is really the fun part of the workshop: writing something, anything, in one of the world’s oldest scripts, using clay and qalam.

“Qalam is an ancient writing tool — in fact, we still use the term in Arabic, which means ‘pen’,” explains the tutor.

“It has this small triangle shape at the end, which you press on the soft clay to imprint the Cuneiform letters, which are represented through different groups of long or short triangles or arrows.” The words inscribed on the clay tablet, from left to right, are separated by drawing vertical and horizontal lines, then the tablet is left to dry (a step jumped in the workshop using a hair-dryer).

“In fact, the symbols that you see here corresponding to the English or Arabic alphabet, are sounds, not letters, and the Cuneiform script had nearly 600 such symbols,” explains Laura Matzer, education manager at Tourism, Development and Investment Company (TDIC), who runs the workshop.

Invented by the Sumerians around the 30th century BC, that is about 5,000 years ago, Cuneiform was used for writing Akkadian, Egyptian, Eblaite and other languages of Mesopotamia, also inspiring the writing of old Persian.

“For each exhibition organised by TDIC here at Manarat, we tailor specific workshops to fit the theme of the exhibition,” says Laura. “Now, during ‘Splendours of Mesopotamia’, we are running these cuneiform workshops because we see this writing throughout the exhibition.”

Before taken into the studio and taught how to write in Cuneiform, the group is given a guided tour of the exhibition, getting to learn quite a bit of history from those very early days.

Mesopotamia, literally meaning “the land between two rivers, that is Tigris and Euphrates, stretches from North-East Syria, throughout Iraq, to the borders of Iran. It has been inhabited from 8000 BC, but only from 3000 BC cities started to be built, which gave rise to the need of written records. Three civilisations were born here, each leaving great marks in the history of humankind.

The first, which opens the “Splendours of Mesopotamia” exhibition, is the Sumer, who lived in what today is South Iraq. Here, in the low-lying, flood-prone plains, they dug irrigation canals that allowed them to build magnificent temples and cities.

In one of them, the city of Uruk, the first Cuneiform scripts were discovered, first using pictograms, then simplified in symbols. Most of them were used for administrative and trade purposes.

One that is no bigger than 4.28 centimetres high and 3.81 centimetres wide, has made it all the way to Manarat Al Saadiyat. Dated Year 1 of King Ibbi-Sin of Ur (that is 2028 BC), it is, in fact, a receipt for clothing items, sent by boat from Sumeria to Dilmun, which is present-day Bahrain! Dilmun is mentioned in Sumerian texts as a port on the trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley.

The colourful, eye-catching Mosaic column drum, from the early third dynasty (about 2500 BC), impeccably preserved, comes from the Tell Al Ubaid, Ninhursag temple. This 59 centimetres high piece, covered in mother of pearls, pink limestone and black shale, is just one section of a column from a temple dedicated to Ninhursag, the Sumerian great mother goddess. In those days, each of the Sumerian cities had it’s own god or goddess.

A depiction of the ziggurat, or temple tower, originally built by the kings of the third dynasty (2100-2000 BC) in the city of Ur, tells much about the life of Sumerians.

Excavated by the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley (1880-1960), the city — or rather the empire — of Ur revealed vast areas of houses, public buildings, the ziggurat and the fascinating royal cemetery.

The temple was built on three floors, the top being reserved for the reverence of gods, the middle for priests and the ground for the government. No one else of a lower rank was allowed to enter.

The royal tombs found in Ur are unique in Mesopotamia, since the usual burial practice of the day was taken to a much more elaborate level, with an abundance of personal possessions, provisions for the after life and gifts for the gods. The enormous amount of rich, largely gold jewellery that belonged to the main occupants of the tombs, suggests Ur was a prosperous society.

Simpler adornments and other objects in the 16 royal tombs found, point towards human sacrifice. It is believed that the servants of Ur’s kings and queens were sacrificed (or sacrificed themselves out of loyalty) and got buried along with their masters, most likely to keep serving them after life. The Ur empire was brought to an end around 2000BC, when the Amorites began invading Mesopotamia, which was split into several small city-states. This is when Babylon began to rise for the first time. Under the famed king Hammurabi (1792-1750), who wrote one of the first recorded set of law codes, 282 of them, Babylon became a political, cultural and religious centre in the region.

Before getting to rule Mesopotamia, though, Babylonia had to suffer years of siege under another great empire, Assyria.

Through 200 ancient treasures from the British Museum, “Splendours of Mesopotamia” tells the extraordinary stories of these three civilisations. A small selection of precious artefacts from Al Ain museum, representing the Gulf’s Um Al Nar civilisation (2600-2300 BC) concludes the exhibition, proving definite links between Mesopotamia and the Gulf. In fact, key ports of Arabia were regularly used by Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian traders on their way to or from India, Persia or even Turkey.

“Splendours of Mesopotamia”, which will end on June 27, is the first of three exhibitions organised by TDIC in anticipation of Zayed National Museum opening in 2014 on Saadiyat Island.

— silvia@khaleejtimes.com