Военная история / Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.

Название: Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.
Автор(ы): Jean Evans, Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel
Издательство: Metropolitan Museum of Art / Yale University Press
Год: 2008
ISBN: 978-0-300-14143-6
Страниц: 554
Язык: English
Формат: PDF
Размер: 119 MB

Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. brings into focus the cultural enrichment shared by civilizations from western Asia to Egypt and the Aegean more than three thousand years ago during the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. With the formation of powerful kingdoms and large territorial states, rising social elites created a demand for precious metals and objects fashioned in styles that reflected contacts with foreign lands. This quest for metals—copper, tin, silver, and gold—was the driving force that led to the establishment of merchant colonies and a vast trade network throughout central Anatolia, as well as to the emergence of a broad internationalism. Exchange took the form of booty and tribute, trade and diplomatic gift-giving, creating the impetus for the circulation of precious goods, stimulating the sharing of ideas, and inspiring artistic creativity. Craftsmen traveled long distances, bearing local imagery to new lands, and the interaction of great states was expressed in new international styles. Commerce and diplomacy linked kings in Mesopotamia and Syria to Anatolia, the Mediterranean, and Egypt.