  About the Artwork
  
  
  The walls of Assyrian palaces and temples were sometimes adorned with glazed terracotta decoration. A tradition for using glazed brick as wall adornment began in the ancient Near East during the thirteenth century BCE in southern Iran.
The Birdman, a magical creature, appeared first in the third millennium BCE as a mischievous being who was bound and brought before the gods. By the late neo-Assyrian period, his role is less clear: here he seems beneficent, his arms raised to support, in all probability, a winged sun-disk, the symbol of divinity.
  
  
  Title
  Glazed Brick with Bird Man
  
  
  Artwork Date
  between 900 and 650 BCE
  
  Artist
  ----------
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  ----------
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Mesopotamian
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  Assyrian
  
  
  Medium
  Glazed terracotta
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 13 1/2 × 13 1/2 × 3 3/4 inches (34.3 × 34.3 × 9.5 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Ceramics
  
  
  Department
  Ancient Near Eastern Art
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Cleo and Lester Gruber Fund and the Hill Memorial Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  1989.68
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
