Antiquities Exhibits

Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights from the Yale Babylonian Collection, through June 30, 2020, at the Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticutt. Ancient Mesopotamia, known as the “Land Between the Rivers” and located in what is now Iraq and Syria, was the birthplace of writing, urban culture, the state, and many other concepts and institutions that shape our world to this day. It produced intriguing works of art, myths and e pics celebrating gods and heroes, and treatises on mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. This exhibit features 150 artifacts including original pieces, images, and translations dating from the mid-4th millennium BCE to the 1st century CE. Among the items on view are an early account of the heroic king Gilgamesh campaigning to the Cedar Forest to slay the monster Huwawa; tablets with poems by the first named author in human history, the princess Enheduanna; the world’s oldest cookbooks with 4,000-year-old recipes; and astronomy tablets with the earliest pros...

Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights from the Yale Babylonian Collections through June 30, 2020 at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticutt. This exhibit shows how everyday life in the 3rd millennium BC was much like life in the 21st century. Children complained that their parents didn’t love them enough. Politicians told grand, untrue stories about their popularity and success. Homemakers read  cookbooks for recipes. Mothers sang lullabies to their children. People reminded others to feed the cats. Artifacts on display include cuneiform tablets, seals, duck-shaped weights, masks of legendary Gilgamesh and his foe Humbaba, carved images of kings, animals and working people, and alabaster wall slabs from a Mesopotamian palace featuring carvings of “geniuses.” The original pieces, selected from Yale's 40,000 works in their Mesopotamia collection, are enhanced by re-creations of legendary artifacts, such as the stele on which is inscribed the Code of...