Akurgal Ekrem. The Art of Greece: Its Origins in the Mediterranean and Near East

Crown Publishers, 1968. — 266 p.Particular aspects of the problem of the relation between early Greek art and the civilizations of the ancient Near East have engaged the attention of many scholars over a period of several generations. But only two monographs exist that treat the problem as a whole. The first general survey came from the pen of the Danish scholar Frederik Poulsen: Der Orient und die friihgriechische Kunst, Berlin, 191 2. A second comprehensive study, The Greeks and Their Eastern Neighbours, was published in London in 1957 after the early death of its author, the English archaeologist T. J. Dunbabin. While both writers discuss the most important Greek elements of style and iconography that can be traced to Near Eastern sources, they do not attempt a systematic examination of the eastern models themselves. Emil Kunze and Humfry Payne made progress in this field, although they had only a limited opportunity to deal with eastern art works. Other important contributions came from Paul Jacobsthal, Gerhart Rodenwaldt, Karl Schefold and Pierre Demargne, who also, however, were restricted to questions of detail, since the mass of the material lay outside their field of specialization. In the last few decades our knowledge of this subject has been further enlarged by the work of a number of scholars. Such distinguished archaeologists as Pierre Amandry, R. D. Barnett, G. M. A. Hanfmann, Helene Kantor, Massimo Pallottino, P. J. Riis and Hans Walter deserve mention here. As we have duly noted on several occasions in this book, many Classical archaeologists, working in the context of their special fields of research, have added important observations bearing on the question of the relationship between East and West.
By contrast, this volume gives full coverage to the main art centres of the Near East between 1000 and 500 B.C., presenting and discussing the most important works of art. The identification of a large body of Near Eastern models should put the question of East-West relations in this period on a sound basis.
Every work of art depends on an existing tradition and upon the circumstances in which it was created. To some extent every art work reflects the characteristics of earlier and contemporary artistic trends in its immediate setting and broader environment. In seeking to place an art object chronologically and geographically, we must first identify the component features of its style and iconography. Only through this preparatory tracing of the significant features to their various sources can we fix with some precision the time and place of production as well as the interpretation of the work in question. The validity of the results depends on the scope of the material available for comparison. This method, which I have used over the past twenty years to classify and to date artistic creations of several cultures and areas of the Near East and Anatolia, is employed more intensively in this book, inasmuch as for the first time I have an opportunity to treat the artistic production of the Near East in its totality.