AP Art History Unit 2 Review: Ancient Mediterranean Art, 3500-300 BCE

Art from the ancient Near East reflects successive city-states, each using art to assert divine kingship. Sumerian votive figures from Eshnunna show worshipers in perpetual prayer; the White Temple at Uruk elevates the deity above the city on a ziggurat platform. Assyrian lamassu figures guard palace entrances as hybrid protective beings. Egyptian art is governed by a drive toward permanence and the afterlife. Hierarchical scale, combined profile and three-quarter view, and registers organize figures by status. The Palette of King Narmer uses all three conventions simultaneously. Monumental stone architecture culminates in the pyramids and shifts to rock-cut tombs and pylon temples in the New Kingdom.

• Hierarchical scale: Figures are sized by importance, not by spatial logic; the pharaoh or deity is always the largest figure in a composition.
• Combined profile and three-quarter view: Head shown in profile, torso frontal, legs in profile; used consistently in Egyptian figural art to show the most complete view of each body part.
• Ziggurat: Massive stepped temple platform in ancient Near Eastern cities, elevating the deity's house above the urban landscape as a cosmological statement.
• Pylon: Massive sloped gateway marking the entrance to Egyptian temples; its monumental scale proclaims pharaonic authority.
• Ka statue: Egyptian funerary sculpture housing the ka, or spirit, of the deceased; placed in tombs to ensure the spirit had a physical anchor in the afterlife.

Greek art is organized into three stylistic periods: Archaic (600-480 BCE), Classical (480-323 BCE), and Hellenistic (323-31 BCE). The Archaic kouros borrows Egyptian frontal rigidity but adds the archaic smile and a freestanding pose. Classical sculpture introduces contrapposto, as in the Doryphoros, which embodies Polykleitos's mathematical canon of ideal proportions. Hellenistic works like the Laocoön and the Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon emphasize dramatic movement, pathos, and psychological intensity. Etruscan art adapts Greek forms for funerary contexts, as seen in the Sarcophagus of the Spouses and the Tomb of the Triclinium. Roman art combines Greek idealization with veristic portraiture and uses concrete construction to achieve unprecedented architectural scale.

• Contrapposto: Weight shifted to one leg, creating a relaxed S-curve through the body; introduced in Classical Greek sculpture and used as a marker of naturalism.
• Archaic smile: Slight upward curve of the lips on Archaic period sculptures; indicates life rather than emotion and distinguishes Archaic from Classical works.
• Veristic portraiture: Roman Republican portrait style that emphasizes every wrinkle and imperfection to convey age, experience, and ancestral authority.
• Roman concrete (opus caementicium): Building material that allowed Romans to construct large vaulted and domed spaces, including the Colosseum and Pantheon, at a scale impossible with Greek post-and-lintel construction.
• Hellenistic period: 323-31 BCE; Greek art after Alexander the Great, characterized by dramatic poses, emotional expression, and expanded subject matter including the elderly and suffering figures.

Cultural exchange in the ancient Mediterranean moved in multiple directions. Egyptian canonical proportions and frontal rigidity directly influenced the earliest Greek kouroi. The Orientalizing period in Greece (7th century BCE) shows Near Eastern motifs, including hybrid creatures and geometric patterns, absorbed into Greek pottery and metalwork. Etruscan and Roman artists collected, copied, and adapted Greek works. Most surviving Classical Greek bronzes are known only through Roman marble copies. The Augustus of Prima Porta borrows the Doryphoros pose and transforms it into imperial propaganda, adding a cuirass with relief iconography and a Cupid figure to assert divine lineage. The Colosseum superimposes Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders across its facade, displaying Greek architectural vocabulary in a Roman concrete structure built for public spectacle.

• Roman copy: A Roman-period reproduction of a Greek original, often in marble rather than bronze; the primary surviving evidence for many lost Greek masterworks.
• Creative adaptation: The process of borrowing an artistic form from another culture and transforming it to serve new purposes, as when Rome reused the Doryphoros pose for the Augustus of Prima Porta.
• Eclecticism: Selecting and combining elements from multiple sources; characteristic of Roman art and architecture, which drew on Greek, Etruscan, and Near Eastern traditions simultaneously.
• Orientalizing period: 7th-century BCE phase in Greek art when Near Eastern motifs, including sphinxes, griffins, and lotus patterns, were absorbed into Greek pottery and metalwork through trade contact.

Purpose and audience determine nearly every formal choice in this unit. In the ancient Near East, ziggurats served communal worship while palace complexes like Persepolis displayed imperial power through processional apadana reliefs. The Code of Hammurabi stele combines law inscription with an image of Hammurabi receiving authority from the sun god Shamash, making royal legitimacy visible and public. Egyptian funerary art is designed for the dead and the gods, not living viewers: ka statues house the spirit, the Book of the Dead guides the deceased through judgment, and pyramid complexes orient the pharaoh toward the sun god Re. Greek art shifts toward civic audiences: the Parthenon's Panathenaic frieze addresses Athenian citizens, and grave stelai like the Grave Stele of Hegeso mark private loss in public space. Roman art serves both public imperial programs, such as the Column of Trajan's continuous narrative of military victory, and private domestic display, as in the frescoes of the House of the Vettii.

• Ka: The Egyptian concept of the spiritual double or life force; ka statues and tomb furnishings were made to sustain it in the afterlife.
• Apadana: The monumental audience hall at Persepolis where processional relief friezes depicted subject peoples bringing tribute, asserting Achaemenid imperial authority.
• Patron: The individual, institution, or ruler who commissions a work; in this unit, patrons range from pharaohs and city-states to Roman emperors and private Pompeian households.
• Continuous narration: A visual technique depicting sequential events in a single composition; used on the Column of Trajan to narrate Dacian War campaigns in a spiral frieze.
• Mortuary temple: An Egyptian temple dedicated to the funerary cult of a pharaoh, where offerings and rituals sustained the ruler in the afterlife; Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari is the key example.

How art historians interpret ancient Mediterranean art depends heavily on what evidence survives. Greek and Roman art benefits from rich literary sources: Pliny the Elder described artists and materials, Pausanias recorded monuments in his Description of Greece, and political and legal records contextualize imperial programs. Etruscan art is interpreted almost entirely through modern archaeology because the Etruscan language was not fully deciphered and no contemporary literary tradition survives in the way Greek and Latin do. Stylistic periodization, dividing Greek art into Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic phases, was systematized by Johann Winckelmann in his 1764 History of Ancient Art and remains the framework used today, though scholars now question its teleological assumptions. Archaeological excavations from the 18th century onward, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, have transformed understanding of Roman domestic art. Technology such as CT scanning of mummies and pigment analysis of sculptures has revised interpretations of works once assumed to be unpainted white marble.

• Stylistic periodization: The division of Greek art into Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic phases based on formal characteristics; introduced by Winckelmann and still used as the primary organizational framework.
• Archaeological stratigraphy: The analysis of soil layers and material deposits to date and contextualize objects; essential for interpreting Etruscan art and Roman domestic contexts like Pompeii.
• Classical tradition: The artistic and intellectual heritage of Greece and Rome that later periods, including the Renaissance and Neoclassicism, consciously revived and reinterpreted.
• Portraiture: The representation of individuals with recognizable features; Roman veristic portraiture and Etruscan sarcophagus portraits are interpreted differently depending on whether literary or archaeological evidence is available.