Warrior with a chin-piece, Mari, Aleppo Museum

Sumerian heads of worshippers intended for a temple. When the sculptor simplified forms, it was to set man free from the human condition. Such references to the immemorial, by way of the assimilation of a worshipper's head to a pebble and Gudea to a menhir, are clearly means of transposing the ephemeral into the eternal. But the process is twofold, for Gudea does not become a menhir but a statue. -- Tell Asmar see WA-33