Look Inside a 4,500-Year-Old Sculpture from Iraq

This is an object that is so direct. I mean, it's really looking at you. You feel like it's something you can commune with. I'm not saying this is a divine animal, but if it is a ritual object, it is navigating between the world of humans and the world of the divine. The stand with an ibex was formally accessioned in 1974, and since 1977, it was pretty much always on display here at the Met. We've enjoyed it tremendously and loved it many years. This object, one of the earliest and important objects from Mesopotamia, is an object of not only profound beauty, but also in a very good preservational condition and well worth presenting, preserving, but also researching. The Met is deeply engaged in the preservation of objects, but also in the deep understanding of objects, where they come from, how they came into this collection. While doing that significant provenance research, we realized that this specific object legally belongs to the Republic of Iraq. So we are returning and restituting this object. This is a very unique object. It's part of our policy, and the Iraqi Embassy here, and with the support of our government, through diplomacy, negotiation, and close partnership, to return such kind of unique object back to the homeland of Iraq and preserve Iraqi heritage. It is a significant step on our partnership. Our colleagues at the Iraqi Embassy thought it was a great idea that we proceed with the research we had already wanted to do, but do it together with our colleagues in Iraq. And that makes it, you know, even better as a project. We're here today to look at the vessel stand with IBEX support with the proposed dating in the mid-third millennium B.C. The IBEX stand belongs to a period that is very early in the formation of Mesopotamia, right after, you know, writing has been invented. I mean, writing comes from this part of the world. And so this is a time and a place that is incredibly formative to not just the field of West Asian studies, but I would argue world history. We know from analysis that it was made from almost pure copper. The eyes are both inlaid. Actually, the one on the proper left is a reconstruction. But on the proper right, the eye is inlaid with shell, and the pupils are lapis lazuli, which would have come from the area that is now Afghanistan. And also the copper itself was sourced in the mountainous regions surrounding Mesopotamia. It's an early example of Sumerian ritual culture. These four rings on top suggest that they were used for sort of conical vessels, which are typical of libations that would be performed in a temple. And it is also a very, very early example, possibly the earliest example of the hollow-core loss-wax casting technique. Here you see that the process begins with the creation of a core out of clay covered with wax in which you will create the designs that you would like in the final casting. After the wax has totally worked to your satisfaction, you would add these other channels in wax for the metal during the casting process. You would use core supports, which were little pieces of metal that you would drive through the wax into the core. These would then hold that core in place after the wax was melted out. This is an example of the final product of this process, and here you can see on the piece that these core supports were taken out of this cast, and they would have been plugged with small pieces of metal. The hollow-core loss-wax technique. Maybe even up until now, we've always situated both from a time and from a locality more into ancient Greece and Rome, but to be able to continue the research that has been going on about how this object came into existence allows us to appreciate Mesopotamian culture even more than we did before. We have an extraordinary conservation and scientific research lab, but the metal is thick enough that it's hard to see that level of detail in normal X-rays and technologies we have here at the Met. So we're really interested in doing a CT scan of the body of the ibex. I'm very excited that we have the opportunity to bring this object to the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany. They have a long history of working on the analysis and examination of cultural objects. Our conservator, J.F., will be met by an Iraqi conservator, Roa Abbas Khadim, from the National Museum in Baghdad, to see exactly how it was made, verify that it was hollow core, to discuss together what this all means. So nice. We're very excited about this research, because it's the first joint research between the Metropolitan Museum and the Iraqi Museum. And there's proof that the country between the two rivers was the first to use this technology before the Greek civilization, 480 BC. It's kind of amazing to think it's 4,400 years old and it's survived largely intact. For art historical research, CT gives the big benefit that it's non-destructive, so most of the time you're not really sure in which condition the piece is. And with X-ray, or specifically CT technology, you're really able to look inside. So that's an essential, more or less. It's really exciting for us to help gain some further knowledge. We did a CT scan of the e-bags. This is really good for, in this case, copper parts, which are very, very thick, which are very dense. Small details up to 200 microns are seen inside. Good, so here we have the first view. Oh, wow, you can see a lot of detail. It was kind of impossible to see with a 2-dimensional radiograph. It's amazing to be able to see the original shape of the core. Very interesting. I think this wire... So you're happy? I'm happy so far. Everything's fine. What about sort of like that frontality, approaching him as I think it was meant to be? You know, if it's a ritual object, you know, the frontality is so key. Hi, J.F., welcome back. Hello, thank you. How was it? It went very well. One thing I can say, it was really wonderful working with Roha there and with Frauhofer because they're essentially midway between us and Iraq and also giving them a connection to the Iraq Museum. Was there one surprising thing about the process? Right, well, yeah, there are some kind of unusual aspects to the back of the core, and I'm not quite sure what is happening there. It may have been that there was some fragmentation of the core when they were inserting the core supports prior to, you know, enveloping the whole wax in the mother mold. It's like an alchemical process where you take these raw materials and through the magic of skill and chance and luck, gradually the technique improved and spread. Look, we're using it today. Sure. And it'll be the beginning of a whole new chapter, a wonderful chapter. Here at the Met, our primary job is to care for the objects in our care. But an object is not a museum. Museums are objects, spaces, and people. And it's also the relationships we build in the process of caring for the objects under our stewardship. It is an honor to work together with His Excellency, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., Nasser al-Karoula, and with our colleagues in Iraq to return this important IBEX sculpture. And we look forward to continuing our partnership, our collaboration, and our fruitful exchanges from here towards the future. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Metropolitan Museum on their scientific and ethical work. The joint research presented advanced understanding of a technique which has impacted cultures across the world. So we are very proud. It really is. It's just a very special piece. And it's been a privilege and an honor to take care of it for many years.