The Arrival of Babylonians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia - Essay Example

The cultures blended with that of the Sumerians. The evidence of this is in the effect of the cultural integration into the original arts of these communities.
Before the arrival of Babylonians and Assyrians, Sumerian art was mainly based on clay writings. Their original art, cuneiform writing, involved writing on clay, metal, or wood using a stylus shaped like a wedge. Sumerians used cuneiform to write or draw their most important cultural and religious figures mainly the gods and goddesses. The cuneiforms mainly represented objects and were not used for scholarly purposes in their original form. Diagram 1 below shows an example of a female head carved in limestone and wood.

However, when the Babylonians arrived, they introduced their culture to the Sumerians. The effect of this was the Babylonian cultural influence on original Sumerian art. Sumerian art started featuring war themes, which were not common before the arrival of the Babylonians. The Babylonian culture influenced the original art of the Sumerians by introducing concepts of war. As illustrated in diagram 2 below, Inanna-Ishtar represents this cultural influence on original Sumerian art. The art sculpture combines the original elements of Sumerian art (goddess of fertility) and the Babylonian war culture (Semitic goddess of war).