Prehistory, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Minoan, Mycenaean

Front 1

Back 1

Paleolithic Cave Painting,
30,000 BCE
Animals, polychromatic,
descriptive, sympathetic magic

Front 2

Back 2

Neolithic (Mesolithic) cave painting,
8,000 BCE
Human figures, narrative, monochromatic

Front 3

Back 3

Venus of Willendorf,
Paleolithic sculpture,
25,000 BCE,
fertility goddess?

Front 4

Back 4

Cuneiform writing,
Mesopotamia,
Started ca. 3,000 BCE

Front 5

Back 5

Code of Hammurabi,
Mesopotamia (Babylon),
1750 BCE,
First code of Law

Front 6

Back 6

Ziggurat at Ur,
Mesopotamian Temple
(Sumerian),
2,100 BCE

Front 7

Back 7

Standard of Ur,
Military victory and spoils, Mesopotamia (Sumerian),
2,600 BCE

Front 8

Back 8

Standard of Ur,
Social hierarchy, prosperity, Mesopotamia (Sumerian),
2,600 BCE

Front 9

Back 9

Worshiper found in temples,
Mesopotamian
(Sumerian),
2,100 BCE

Front 10

Back 10

Fresco of the Jumping of the Bull,
Minoan Civilization,
Crete, 1,500 BCE

Front 11

Back 11

Palace of Knossos,
Minoan Civilization,
Crete, 1,500 BCE

Front 12

Back 12

Mycenaean tholos (Tomb)
City of Mycenae,
Mycenaean Culture
1,300 BCE

Front 13

Back 13

Theseus killing the Minotaur,
Legend of Theseus, Ariadne, Pasiphae, Minos and the labyrinth.

Front 14

Back 14

Pyramids of Giza,
Egypt, 2500 BCE

Front 15

Back 15

Ceremony of the opening
of the mouth,
Egyptian funeral represented in the Book of the Dead

Front 16

Back 16

Weighing of the heart,
Ceremony of the weighing of
the heart
represented in the
Book of the Dead

Front 17

Back 17

Egyptian funerary figurines
(Shabti)
representing servants to be used in the afterlife

Front 18

Back 18

Menakaure and Queen,
Egyptian sculpture,
2460 BCE,
Rigidity, frontality, idealization.

Front 19

Back 19

Egyptian mummy and canopic jars with organs

Front 20

Back 20

Rosetta stone, trilingual inscription (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek)
that was the key for the decipherment of hieroglyphic script.

Front 21

Back 21

Phaestus Disk,
Linear A,
Undeciphered Minoan writing,
2,000 BCE, Crete.

Front 22

Back 22

The ransom of Hector,
(Achilles, Priam, Hector’s body),
Homer’s Iliad,
8th cent. BCE

Front 23

Back 23

Palace of Knossos,
Minoan Civilization,
Crete, 1,500 BCE

Front 24

Back 24

Stonehenge,
Megalithic Monument,
Neolithic period, ca.
2,000 BCE,
England