Beginner’s guide: Ancient Near East

Some of the earliest urban centers can be found in ancient Mesopotamia.

c. 3500–400 B.C.E.

Ancient Near Eastern Art has long been part of the history of Western art, but history didn’t have to be written this way. It is largely because of the West’s interests in the Biblical “Holy Land” that ancient Near Eastern culture has been be regarded as part of the Western canon of the history of art.