Warka Vase

The Vase of Warka ( Uruk Vase) is one of the greatest examples urukzeitlicher relief art; it dates back to the fourth millennium BC. The 93 cm high cult vessel is designed as reliefs and distributed to multiple register details of a ritual celebration.

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The reliefs of vase are regarded as the earliest representations of the Mesopotamian world order, divided into four sections: In the lower two registers the animal and plant life in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is shown carrying the human sphere with naked men, the baskets in the middle; the upper register shows a cultic scene with the priestess of the goddess Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and fertility.

The uniqueness of the Early Sumerian art is indisputable because of its narrative power and importance of the vessel as a ritual object; the vase is also regarded as the earliest example of narrative art of relief.

The fate of the vase in the 20th century

While German excavations in Uruk, now Warka, in winter 1933/1934 came in the so-called archaic layer III of the Temple District of the goddess Inanna, a large number of finds to light. Among them were the fragments of monumental vase. A plaster-casting of the reconstructed original is shown due to the specific cultural and historical significance for many decades in the space 5 of the Berlin Near Eastern Museum together with the fragment of another similar vessel.

In the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, the vase was a main attraction of the exhibition on the early Sumerian art. During the American invasion in 2003 it was one of the thousands of artifacts that were stolen. The vase was returned in fragmented state of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad on 12 June 2003.