The beauty of the classical age, at the met Exhibitions

Homer. Nineveh. Nebuchadnezzar. Nimrud. Cuneiform. The Hitites. The greatest hits of ancient history come to life at the Met’s Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age.

The sweeping exhibition brings together over 260 objects from some 40 museums and private collections spread across fourteen nations. It presents an in-depth view of the history and artistic and cultural developments of the Assyrian empire in the ancient near east.

Three aspects of Assyrian art and history form the central themes of the exhibition. The first, Assyria’s Expansion, follows the land-based expansion of the civilization in the early parts of the first millennia B.C. Next, Phoenician Expansion, is a presentation of further growth via Mediterranean trade routes. Finally, the Adoption of Near Eastern Artistic Traditions is documented with works of art that bear striking similarities to Egyptian and Greek motifs such as sphinxes, human-headed birds, and griffins, as they trace influences as far afield as the Iberian peninsula.

Bring your reading glasses. There are comprehensive wall texts with rich historical data that accompany the works of art. They give context and help explain why these bits of pottery and strange deities are different from others, and how they came to be.

Art, in the ancient world, was communication. In societies were very few could read or write and tribes and nations did not share languages, anything that everyone needed to know had to be said through pictures. The works of art presented, including relief wall carvings, sculptures, metalwork, and recreations of architectural sites, bring to mind that these were people intent on gathering power.

They depict, largely, big, brawny men with bulging muscles. Their leaders were shown as fearsome and larger than life-sized. Their deities were more strapping than ethereal. Animals presented are massive bulls with bulging muscles. Hunting scenes show men wrestling big, burly lions. You get the picture. They were meant to impress and intimidate. They sent a message to all who saw them, and by incorporating the visual vocabulary of other cultures, like the Egyptians and the Greeks, they were meant to siphon some of that strength into their own.

One of the most powerful pieces is the Statue of Ashurnasirpal II, ca. 883–859 B.C. emerging in white stone from a dark niche. It’s a striking presentation, and a great, rare example of early sculpture in the round, before artists were accustomed to the challenge of carving freestanding three-dimensional objects.

A model of Babylon’s famous Ishtar Gate and Processional Way is presented, with growling golden lions on beautiful lapis blue tiles, along with actual reliefs from the period. Also on view are helmets, weapons, and shields and a huge cauldron rimmed with sculpted bird’s heads that’s particularly impressive. A Pazuzu sculpture, ca. 8th century B.C., is a bronze on loan from the Louvre that depicts a strange skeletal birdlike being with cat’s paws, definitely not of this world.

If you go, be sure not to miss the Met’s own extraordinary collection of work in the nearby Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery for Assyrian art. It’s absolutely top notch. The experience of both the works in the Sackler Gallery and the exhibition puts history into focus, while, at the same time, reminding us how different the world was at the dawn of the classical age.

It also brings to the forefront an important, unspoken reality. Art museums and curators are acutely aware of the dangers facing treasured works of art in times of social upheaval. They’ve seen what has happened to irreplaceable relics in war-torn nations. By presenting, at this particular moment, this selection of rare objects that speak to a shared past of all humanity, the Met and the exhibition curators seem to be driving home the point that passive observation is certainly not the best course for preservation. Engaging visitors both at the museum, and through its now extensive offerings on the web, seems to be a worthwhile way to help people to understand an important moment of cultural development, and even more worthwhile, to teach us to care.

The exhibition runs through Jan. 4.