The Furniture of Western Asia,Ancient and Traditional.

• Author: Muscarella, Oscar White
• Position: Review

Edited by GEORGINA HERRMANN. Mainz am Rhein: PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 1996. Pp. xxviii + 301, 143 illustrations, 92 plates. DM 248.

My first encounter with ancient furniture was with the beautiful artifacts, wood and bronze, brilliantly revealed after some 2700 years when excavated in Tumulus MM at Gordion. Who thereafter could ignore furniture, even if not becoming a specialist? With this volume students of all cultural periods will come to realize how important and wonderful ancient furniture is as evidence not only for the accoutrements of individual cultures, but also for its manufacturing, technological, and aesthetic strategies. Published here are almost all of the twenty-four papers (plus two added) delivered at a 1993 conference in London organized by G. Herrmann. The articles are instructive, well written throughout, and well illustrated; the book has a generous supply of photographs and a good bibliography. Sorely needed, however, is an index, to permit cross-checking specific techniques or shapes among the various cultures. (An excellent diachronical survey of ancient Near Eastern furniture, E. Simpson's "Furniture in Ancient Western Asia" [Civilisations of the Ancient Near East, III, ed. J. Sasson (New York: Scribner's, 1995), 1647-71] will give general background for readers of this volume.)

There are certain limitations regarding areas investigated. The reader is provided with good summaries of the specific forms of ancient furniture and the materials used to manufacture it. The evidence draws on archaeological remains, artistic representations (on seals, reliefs, paintings), and textual references. The following regions are discussed in these essays: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, Levant, Bronze Age Aegean, Anatolia, north Syria, and Elam. Included too are cultural periods such as Achaemenian, Sasanian, Parthian, and Islamic. Two contributions discuss the trees and woods employed and the carving techniques in use.

We miss essays on northwestern and western Iran (for the latter there is more evidence than that briefly supplied by P. Calmeyer on the nipple beaker?). While two essays deal effectively with the early Mesopotamian cultures (L. al-Gailani Werr, H. Crawford), and two with the neo-Assyrian period (G. Herrmann, J. Curtis), there is nothing on earlier Assyrian or Akkadian furniture. Preserved excavated material from Jericho and Baghouz is included (P. Parr), but material from Pazyryk is omitted. I think that there should have...