Extreme Makeover: Queen Puabi Lecture at Penn Museum
By STAN PARCHIN
March 3, 2010
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| Mesopotamian, Sumerian (ca 2650-2550 B.C.). Headdress and Jewelry of Queen Puabi (Comb, Hair Rings, Three Wreaths, Hair Ribbon and Earrings). Gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. |
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's Scholars Series presents Extreme Makeover: Queen Puabi on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 from 12:00 Noon to 1:00 P.M. The pay-what-you-wish event (with regular museum admission donation) takes place in Classroom 2 near the Trescher Entrance.
Senior Conservator Lynn Grant describes the elaborate 4,500-year-old jewelry found in a royal Mesopotamian burial at the site of Ur (in present-day Iraq) in the early 1930s. She takes an historical look at Queen Puabi and demonstrates how Penn Museum experts make more than nine pounds of her gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian ornaments look their very best for display.
Queen Puabi and Her Jewelry
Forensic scientists at London's Natural History Museum determined that Queen Puabi was about 40 years of age at the time of her death. Her name and title are inscribed in cuneiform on one of three cylinder seals found with her remains. All women in early Mesopotamia were described in relation to their husbands. The absence of a spouse's name on Puabi's artifacts suggests that she may have been a queen in her own right prior to Ur's First Dynasty.
Queen Puabi was buried with the finest jewelry and accessories available at the time. Her ornate Headdress (ca. 2650-2550 B.C.), comprised of a comb, hair rings, three wreaths, a hair ribbon and double-lunate or crescent-shaped earrings, surmounted an elaborately braided coiffure (possibly a wig) known only from contemporary sculptural representations. It was made from gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian. The level of the headdress' artistic sophistication, with its floral imagery of gold willow and beech leaves, demonstrates Puabi's elevated place in Sumerian society. Seven gold rosettes, suspended over the headdress from a comb, reflect the Sumerian preoccupation with vegetation and fertility.
Sources
Aruz, Joan with Ronald Wallenfels (eds.), et al. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus (exh. cat.). New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2003, 93-96, 108-119.
Zettler, Richard L. and Lee Horne (eds.), et al. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur (exh. cat.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1998, 32-39, 86-122.
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