Posted on 12/06/2007 8:28:59 AM PST by blam
Lion sculpture gets record price
The Guennol Lioness was discovered at a site near Baghdad
A tiny limestone figure of a lion from ancient Mesopotamia has sold at auction for $57m (£28m), almost double the previous record price for a sculpture. The 8.3cm (3.25in) tall Guennol Lioness is thought to have been carved 5,000 years ago in what is now Iraq and Iran.
The lion, whose new owner has not been identified, had been on loan to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for 59 years.
The previous record for a sculpture was set last month when Pablo Picasso's Tete de Femme was sold for $29m.
A 2,000-year-old Roman bronze sold for $28m in June, the previous record price for an antiquity sold at auction.
'Storied figure'
The ancient carving, which was found at a site near Baghdad, was acquired in 1948 by Alastair and Edith Martin and formed part of their Guennol Collection.
The proceeds of the sale will benefit a charitable trust formed by the Martin Family.
Before the auction in New York on Wednesday, the head of Sotheby's antiquities department, Richard Keresey, described the figure as a "brilliant combination of animal form and human pose".
"The successful bidder.. will have the distinction of owning one of the oldest, rarest and most beautiful works of art from the ancient world," he added.
The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, entered the bidding at $27m, already $9m more than what the sculpture had been expected to fetch.
Mesopotamia, which was located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, has been called the "cradle of civilisation" because agriculture, animal herding and domestication developed there earlier than anywhere else, almost 8,000 years ago.
By 3000 BC, the Mesopotamians had already invented the wheel, developed writing, and created the world's first cities and monumental architecture.
GGG Ping.
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Thanks Blam. |
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BUMP!
Does anyone remember the old movie serial about the Lion men? They wore neat lion headdesses and lion claws attached to their hands. As I recall, either Jungle Jim or Tarzan had a hell of a time with them.
I think the remaining members of that cult bought it.
Or was that the leopard men? I forget. Nevermind.
LAMENTATION FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF UR
(Great) fires he lit that heralded the storm. The people mourn. And lit on either flank of furious winds the searing heat of the desert. Like flaming heat of noon this fire scorched.
The storm ordered by Enlil in hate, the storm which wears away the country, covered Ur like a cloth, veiled it like a linen sheet.
On that day did the storm leave the city; that city was a ruin. O father Nanna, that town was left a ruin. The people mourn. On that day did the storm leave the country. The people mourn. Its people('s corpses), not potsherds, littered the approaches. The walls were gaping; the high gates, the roads, were piled with dead. In the wide streets, where feasting crowds (once) gathered, jumbled they lay. In all the streets and roadways bodies lay. In open fields that used to fill with dancers, the people lay in heaps.
The country's blood now filled its holes, like metal in a mold; bodies dissolved -- like butter left in the sun...
Maybe this storm.
http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/SitesFromSatellites/sites.php?name=uruk-ur&view=c
Ur and Uruk locations Google.
See my post #29 on this thread.
Reconstruction of the palaeoshorelines and palaeobathymetry for the Persian Gulf at 12,000 years ago. The lower part of the Gulf is first flooded at about 13,000 years BP but large freshwater lakes could have developed in several locations within the valley floor. Large shallow depressions also occur on the southern margin of the present Gulf.
How it was found...and Woolleys team at work.
At the end of the Ice Age, there was an ‘over-shoot’ and the world’s oceans were once (not for very long) deeper than they are now. The Russians building the foundation for the Aswan High Dam encountered this silt layer...I think it’s the same one that Wooley encountered.
where did the water go? (Let me guess - into the porous cavities in the crust of the earth?)
I live in an area that is extinct shield volcano. All around me I can see evidence of an ancient shoreline...about 300 feet HIGH!
but I STILL want to know - where did all the water go? And how did it carry those stones on top of the ziggaraut?
There is a theory that masses of water rushed down from the Zagros Mountains and all the soil carried by the rushing water filled the valley depression between the two rivers.
That's with the world's oceans reduced by about 320 feet. Some say the level was reduced by as much as 500 feet...most accept 400 feet.
I don't know anything about the ziggaraut or that situation. The water I'm talking about went back into ice. It's with us today.
The Russians building the foundation for the Aswan High Dam encountered this silt layer...I think it’s the same one that Wooley encountered.Just some quibbles, the Russians found that the Nile used to run in a very deep, narrow gorge, but that was a few million years back, while the Med was still disconnected from the Atlantic. The Woolley layer is generally held to have been a spray of sediment, similar to a delta, from a single, short-lived event (and that was in historical times). ;')
“a few million years back” s/b “a few million years old”
From a gradualist perspective, the continents rose (and the sea basins deepened) due to isostatic rebound after the glaciers melted. So the “overshoot” would be from the glaciers having melted, and the continents not having yet rebounded. That’s a possibility (we all know how highly I regard gradualism). See also:
In the shadow of the Moon
New Scientist | 30 January 1999 | editors
Posted on 08/31/2004 11:42:25 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1203912/posts
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