DOUBLE BULL JUG
-19-17 Centuries BCE – Double Bull Jug- These ancients liked things in pairs——-they also really liked bulls, all shapes and sizes! At the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara
DOUBLE GODDESS
Holy of holies: Siamese twins or Queer Love among the fertility goddesses——-Perhaps an allusion to double power. This goddess is placed above all the other goddesses in the case at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara
DOUBLE YELL JUG
-Swear to God!! Oh those ancients- This pitcher is from 5000-7000 BCE——The humanity and humor of the ancient craftsmen is shouting at me across the millennia. A far cry (!) from the careful, humorless depictions of life in the developing Mesopotamian cultures seen in many documentaries.
LOTS OF CATS
-I think this little lion is a bronze – [others are] wood or bone——Here, Kitty Kitty at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
TOYS & A PARASOL
-The Child in Gordion – All his toys! This tomb was a happy place, full of color when it was shut into the dark. Tomb complex of King Midas: 2760-year-old wooden toys from the tomb of a child at once important & beloved – Jocular griffin eating a fish – A yoked ox – Perhaps the parasol shaded the little boy on his journey to the afterlife. This parasol fragment was found with four teeth- all that was left of a 3 or 4-year-old boy. The parasol means he was royal – Fan – A deer sticking out its tongue – Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara—–This child was possibly an older brother of King Midas. All the toys are carved of boxwood.
KING MIDAS’S TABLE
Boxwood, from 740 BCE. Archeologist Dr Elizabeth Simpson spent years reconstructing this table from sodden splinters found in King Midas’s tomb in the 1950s. Nobody else could figure it out. She also reconstructed and preserved many other items in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. I had the good luck to meet Dr Simpson years ago, and have wanted to draw this table for a long time. Nothing like it has ever been found anywhere.
Group seats in the museum were all banned because of the Pandemic, but I found an open single and asked a guard if I could sit on it. He hauled it over close to the case and left me to draw. Where would we be without the people who guard all this fantastic cultural treasure?
