Niederreiter, Zoltán : Mesopotamia. Kingdom of Gods and Demons

Zoltán Niederreiter (ed.),
Mesopotamia. Kingdom of Gods and Demons

Budapest 2024

ISBN 978-615-6595-33-1


496 S./pp., zahlr. Farb- und S/W-Abb./num. colour and b/w-figs., 30 x 23,5 cm; kartoniert/hardcover

The comprehensive and representative catalogue accompanies the exhibition „Mesopotamia. Kingdom of Gods and Demons“ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (4 October 2024 – 2 February 2025) and includes contributions from some of the most eminent Hungarian and international experts on the subject.

The large-scale exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts takes visitors to Mesopotamia in the first half of the first millennium BCE, where they can see magnificent reliefs from Assyrian palaces, such as the shining blue snake-dragon from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon and the glazed brick lions that adorned the procession route. The Mesopotamian world of gods and demons is brought to life through cylinder seals, statues and amulets made of minerals and rocks, but we also evoke the story of the flood from Mesopotamian mythology, the legendary figures of Nimrod and Ninus, and the Tower of Babel.
The artefacts from Aššur, Babylon, Dūr-Šarrukīn and Kalḫu excavated in Mesopotamia come from major European collections, including the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, the Musée du Louvre and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen (in addition to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts).