Global Prehistory
Found in Namibia, these portable rock slabs feature painted animal imagery and represent some of the earliest known artwork by humankind.
What are the Apollo 11 stones?
Made of carved wood, fiber, and shell, these portable or ritual figures from the Cook Islands represent ancestral deities and embody the islanders' spiritual power (mana).
What is Staff God?
This monumental mud-brick tiered platform topped by a temple reflects the Sumerian hierarchy of scale and a bridge between humans and the sky gods.
What is the ziggurat and white temple?
This Predynastic greywacke palette uses hierarchical scale and composite perspective to commemorate the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.
What is the Palette of King Narmer?
Found in a burial site in Liangzhu, China, the precise geometric carving of jade cong—a material too hard to cut with ordinary tools—signaled this contextual status of the deceased owner.
What is high elite status (or wealth/political-religious power)?
Painted deep within a French cave network, this massive subterranean hall features overlapping, dynamic depictions of bulls, horses, and stags utilizing twisted perspective.
What is the Great Hall of the Bulls (Lascaux Caves)?
This animal-shaped carved stone pestle from Papua New Guinea is believed to have been used for grinding taro or other ritual substances.
What is the Ambum Stone?
These gypsum, shell, and black limestone statues with wide, staring eyes represent mortal surrogate worshippers standing in perpetual prayer.
What are the Statues of votive figures from the Square Temple at Eshnunna?
Unlike idealized pharaoh sculptures, this painted limestone Old Kingdom sculpture features realistic signs of aging, a soft belly, and an alert, active expression.
What is the Seated Scribe?
The stylized, anthropomorphic stele found on the Arabian Peninsula features a carved double-bladed dagger, suggesting that even in the Neolithic era, the region was connected to others through this activity.
What is trade (or global exchange networks)?
Located in Wiltshire, England, this megalithic monument utilizes post-and-lintel construction aligned with the summer solstice.
What is Stonehenge?
This intricate wooden structure from Micronesia was used only on land.
What is a Navigation chart?
These colossal, man-headed winged bulls served as protective citadel guardians with five legs so they look correct from both front and profile views.
What are the Lamassu from the citadel of Sargon II?
This New Kingdom mortuary complex uses colonnaded limestone terraces integrated into a sheer desert cliff to honor a female pharaoh.
What is the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut?
By showing the Babylonian king standing at eye-level with the sun god Shamash on his famous Stele, Hammurabi contextually uses art to assert this political concept.
What is the divine right to rule (or divine legitimization of his laws)?
Discovered in Algeria, this running female figure with body paint and horned ceremonial attire suggests ritual or a deity associated with agriculture.
What is Running Horned Woman?
Carved from volcanic basalt in Rapa Nui (Easter Island), these monumental monolithic statues represent deified ancestors gazing inland over communities.
What are the Moai?
This double-sided wooden box uses inlaid lapis lazuli and shell to contrast a vibrant banquet scene with a military campaign.
What is the Standard of Ur?
During the Amarna period under Akhenaton, this intimate sunken relief shows the royal family under the life-giving rays of the sun disc (Aten).
What is Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and three daughters?
The relief carvings along the staircases of the Apadana at Persepolis deliberately depict 23 different subject nations peacefully bearing gifts, serving as imperial propaganda to highlight this specific quality of Persian rule.
What is cultural tolerance (or the vast diversity / cooperation of the Achaemenid Empire)?
This Neolithic greenstone sculpture from China features a hollow cylinder nestled inside a square exterior, likely carrying cosmological symbolism related to earth and sky.
What is a Jade cong?
This Hawaiian cloak features rigid geometric styling and was used by high-ranking chiefs in rituals of war and political power.
What is an 'ahu'ula?
This massive Persian palace complex features huge columns topped by double-bull capitals and rows of diverse subjects bringing tribute to the king.
What is Audience Hall (Apadana) of Darius and Xerxes)?
Painted on papyrus from the Book of the Dead, this scene depicts the heart of the deceased being weighed against the feather of Ma'at by Anubis.
What is the Last Judgment of Hu-Nefer (from the Book of the Dead)?
The wrapped barkcloth covering the core of the Cook Islands Staff God was contextually vital because it protected and contained this invisible, sacred life force.
What is mana?