Lloyd Seton. The Art of the Ancient Near East

New York - Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961. — 302 p. — (Praeger World of Art Series)The Near East, cradle of civilization, gave birth to arts of monumental sculpture and painting in a time long before the beginnings of written history. By the time Athens was bursting into flower as a center of Western culture, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and their neighbors could look back on nearly twenty-five centuries of continuous artistic development. With the exception of perspective, almost every aspect of visual expression known today had been studied and brilliantly exploited, each culture in its turn adding its quota to the ever-increasing sum of accomplishment. The legacy we ourselves have inherited from these distant times can be seen in the varied and magnificent array of art work, preserved either where their makers placed them or distributed among the great museums of the world. Seton Lloyd has written a brilliant text of great interest to art lover and archaeologist ahke, in which the art of the ancient Near East is for the first time presented in a popular manner by one of the world's leading authorities.
260 illustrations. 73 color plates.