#warka vase

[thebotanicalarcade]

The Warka Mace, depicting date palm offshoots.

[thebotanicalarcade]

The Warka Vase is an iconic artifact of Mesopotamia. In the absence of rigorous botanical study, the plants depicted on the lowest register are usually thought to be flax and grain. This analysis of the image identified as grain argues that its botanical characteristics, iconographical context and similarity to an archaic sign found in proto-writing demonstrates that it should be identified as a date palm sapling. It confirms the identification of flax.

From Sign and Image: Representations of Plants on the Warka Vase of Early Mesopotamia

[urbanosity]

in the museum

[the-history-of-art-blog]

Warka (or Uruk) Vase. Protoliterate. Uruk (or Warka), Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

Origianlly this vase was discovered in fragments, but has since been repaired. The stone itself is thought to have been imported since Mesopotamia had so little stone in the area. Because there is no writing, only carvings, indicates that it is Protoliterate, meaning circa 3300-3000 BCE. The images depictedare thought to be of a harvest festival. At the bottom is water, then wheat and barley, followed by goats. People come afterwards, shown as priests (who were naked because they appear naked before their gods). People are carrying baskets of offerings and goods in a procession that continues to the top line of the vase. The Goddess, at the very top, is bigger due to hierarchical scale, that is, that the most important figure is bigger than the other figures.

[art-through-the-ages]

Warka Vase (Presentation of offerings to Inanna), from Uruk (modern Warka),Iraq, ca. 3200 - 3000 BCE.

Alabaster

hold offerings to Goddess Inanna

one of the earliest examples of narrative art

depicts a ritual enactment that may be associated with the idea of the Sacred Marriage (the union of a God or a Goddess and a mortal)