• Artist: Unknown
• Original Location: Willendorf, Austria
• Full Title: Nude Woman (Venus of Willendorf)
• Date: ca. 28,000-25,000 BCE
• Medium: Limestone
• Significance 1: Oldest prehistoric female figure.
• Significance 2: Emphasis is on female anatomy, scholars question the nature of these figures as fertility images.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original Location: Lascaux, France
• Full Title: Hall of the Bulls in cave at Lascaux
• Date: ca. 15,000-13,000 BCE
• Medium: Paint of cave wall
• Significance 1: Bulls are painted in composite view with heads in profile, but horns facing front.
• Significance 2: Many are colored silhouettes and others were created by outline alone.  These are the two basic approaches to painting in the history of art.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original Location: Royal cemetary, Ur, Iraq
• Title: Bull-headed Lyre from King's Grave
• Date: ca. 2600 BCE
• Medium: Gold leaf and lapiz lazuli over a wooden core.
• Significance 1: The sound box is a very early specimen of recurring theme in both literature and art of animals acting as people.
• Significance 2: Inlaid with figures of a Gilgamesh-like hero and acting out scenes of uncertain significance.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original Location: Susa, Iran
• Title: Stele with Law Code of Hamurabi
• Date: ca. 1780 BCE
• Medium: Black basalt
• Significance 1: A comprehensive law code for Hamurabi's people and the only one of its kind to contain great detail.
• Significance 2: Shamash is depicted in front and side views and artist seemed to explore foreshortening in his beard.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original Location: Hierakonpolis, Egypt predynastic
• Title: Palette of King Narmer
• Date: ca 3000-2920 BCE
• Medium: Slate
• Significance 1: One of the earliest historical artworks preserved.
• Significance 2: Earliest existing labeled historical art.

• Artist: Senmut
• Location: Deir el-Bahri, Egypt
• Title: Mortuary Temple of Hatsheput
• Date: ca. 1473-1458 BCE
• Medium: Limestone cliffs
• Significance 1: The first great tribute to a woman's achievement in the history of art.
• Significance 2: First female monarch whose name is recorded.  Painted reliefs recounting her divine birth and significant achievements adorned her funerary temple.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original location: Amarna, Egypt, 18th Dynasty
• Title: Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and Three Daughters
• Date: ca. 1353-1335 BCE
• Medium: Limestone
• Significance 1: This kind of intimate portrayal of the pharaoh and his family is unprecedented in Egyptian art.
• Significance 2: 1' 1/4" high, sunken relief.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original Location: Knossos, Greece
• Title: Bull Leaping
• Date: ca. 1450-1400 BCE
• Medium: Fresco
• Significance 1: In contrast to the angularity, of the figures in Egyptian wall paintings, the curving lines suggest the elasticity of living and moving beings.
• Significance 2: The women have fair skin and the man has dark skin, a common convention in ancient painting.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original location: Palace at Knossos, Greece

• Title: Snake Goddess

• Date: ca. 1600 BCE

• Medium: Faience

• Significance 1: May represent a priestess, but it is more likely a bare-breasted goddess.

• Significance 2: The snakes in her hands and the feline on her head imply that she has power over the animal world.

• Artist: Andokides
• Original location: Orvieto, Italy
• Title: Achilles and Ajax Playing a Dice Game
• Date: ca. 525-520 BCE
• Medium: Ceramic vase
• Significance 1: Around 530 BCE, the Andokides Painter invented the red-figure technique.
• Significance 2: Some of his early vases are "bilingual" meaning that the same scene appears on both sides, one in black-figure, one in red-figure.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original location: Riace, Italy
• Title: Warrior from the Sea
• Date: ca. 460-450 BCE
• Medium: Bronze
• Significance 1: 6'6" high
• Significance 2: Has inlaid eyes and silver teeth, eyelashes, and lips.

• Artist: Gnosis
• Original location: Pella, Greece
• Title: Stag Hunt
• Date: ca. 300 BCE
• Medium: Pebble Mosaic, figural panel
• Significance 1: 10' 2" high
• Significance 2: This stag hunt by Gnosis bears the earliest known signature of a mosaicist.

• Artist: Unknown
• Original location: Udayagiri, India
• Title: Boar Avatar of Vishnu rescuing the earth
• Date: early fifth century
• Medium: Cave relief
• Significance 1: Relief is 13' x 22'; Vishnu 12' 8" high.
• Significance 2: One of the earliest Hindu stone sculptures.

• Artist: Various
• Original location: Lintong,China
• Title: Army of the first emperor of Qin
• Date: ca. 210 BCE
• Medium: Painted terracotta
• Significance 1: More than 6,000 life-size terracotta soldiers.
• Significance 2: Alternating molds are used so there is continuity but they're all different.  Each has a different facial expression.

The "old" stone age, during which humankind produced the first sculptures and paintings.

A pointed tool used for engraving or incising.

To cut into a surface with a sharp instrument; also a method of decoration, especially on metal or pottery.

Origin or source, find spot .

In sculpture, figures projecting from a background of which they are part.  The degree of relief is designated high, low (bas) or sunken.  In the last, the artist cuts the design into the surface so that the highest projecting parts of the image are no higher than the surface itself.

The way in which an artist organizes forms in an artwork, either by placing shapes on a flat surface or arranging forms in space.

A convention of representation in which part of a figure is shown in profile and another part of the same figure is shown frontally, also called twisted perspective.

A hard baked clay used for sculpture and as a building material.  It may be glazed or painted.

Latin "burial mound".  In Etruscan architecture, tumuli cover are one or more subterranean multi-chambered tombs cut out of the local tufal (limestone).  Also characteristic, of the Japanese Kofun period of the third and fourth centuries.

A picture, usually stylized that represents an idea, also writing using such means; also painting on rock.

Latin, "wedge-shaped".  A system of writing used in ancient Mesopotamia, in which wedge-characters were produced by pressing a stylus into a soft clay tablet, which was then baked or otherwise allowed to harden.

The chamber at the center of an ancient temple; in a classical temple, the room (Greek, naos) in which the cult statue usually stood.

A gift of gratitude to a deity.

An artistic convention in which greater size indicates greater importance.

A composition that is symmetrical on either side of a central figure.

Assyrian guardian in the form of a man-headed winged bull.

An arcade having no true openings, applied as decoration to a wall surface.

A plant native to Egypt and adjacent lands used to make paperlike writing material; also the material or any writing on it.

Late Egyptian writing.

Arabic, "bench". An ancient Egyptian rectangular brick or stone structure with sloping sides erected over a subterranean tomb chamber connected with the outside by a shaft. 

In ancient Egypt, the container in which the organs of the deceased were place for later burial with the mummy.

Greek, "city of the dead".  A large burial area or cemetery.

A rule, for example, of proportion.  The ancient Greeks considered beauty to be a matter of correct proportion and sought a canon of proportion, for the human figure and for buildings.  The fifth-century BCE sculptor Polykleitos wrote the Canon, a treatise incorporating his formula for the perfectly proportioned statue.

Vertical channeling, roughly semicircular in cross-section and used principally on columns and pilasters.

Usually, the front of a building; also, the other sides when they are emphasized architecturally.

A male figure that functions as a supporting column.  See also caryatid.

A female figure that functions as a supporting column.

A hall with a roof supported by columns.

The fenestrated part of a building that rises above the roofs of the other parts. The oldest known clerestories are Egyptian.  In Roman basilicas and medieval churches, clerestories are the windows that form the nave's uppermost level below the timber ceiling or the vaults.

A low-fired opaque glasslike silicate.

Fashioned of gold or ivory.

A method of stone construction, named after the mythical Cyclopes, using massive irregular blocks without mortar, characteristic of the Bronze Age fortifications of Tiryns and other Mycenaean sites. 

Formed in relief by beating a metal plate from the back, leaving the impression on the face.  The metal sheet is hammered into a hollow mold of wood or some other pliable material and finished with a graver.

The ancient name of Greece.

A mixture of fine clay and water used in ceramic decoration.

An ancient Greek two-handled jar used for general storage purposes, usually to hold oil or wine.

Greek, "young woman".  An archaic Greek statue of a young woman.

Greek, "young man".  An Archaic Greek statue of a young man.

A painting technique in which pigment is mixed with melted wax and applied to the surface while the mixture is hot.

In classical architecture, a colonnade all around the cella and its porches.  A peripteral colonnade consists of a single row of columns on all sides; a dipteral colonnade has a double row all around.

One of the two systems invented in ancient Greece for articulating the three units of the elevation of a classical building--the platform, the colonnade, and the superstructure (entablature).  The Doric order is characterized by, among other features, capitals with funnel-shaped echinuses, columns without bases, and a frieze of triglyphs and metopes.

One of the two systems invented in ancient Greece for articulating the three units of the elevation of a classical building; the platform, the colonnade, and the superstructure (entablature).  The Ionic order is characterized by, among other features, volutes, capitals, columns with bases, and an uninterrupted frieze.  

A more ornate form than Doric or Ionic; it consists of a double row of acanthus leaves from which tendrils and flowers grow, wrapped around a bell shaped echinus.  Although this capital form is often cited as the distinguishing feature of the Corinthian order, no such order exists, in strict terms, but only this style of capital used in the Ionic order.

The lintel or lowest division of the entablature; also called the epistyle.

The part of the entablature between the architrave and the cornice; also, any sculptured or or painted band in a building.

The projecting, crowning member of the entablature framing the pediment; also, any crowning projection.

A triple projecting, grooved member of a Doric frieze that alternates with metopes.

The square panel between the triglyphs in a Doric frieze, often sculpted in relief.

The convex profile (an apparent swelling) in the shaft of a column.

The use of perspective to represent in art the apparent visual contraction of an object that extends back in space at an angle to the perpendicular plane of sight.

The disposition of the human figure in which one part is turned in opposition to another part (usually hips and legs one way, shoulders and chest another), creating a counterpositioning of the body about its central axis.  Sometimes called "weight shift" because the weight of the body tends to be thrown to one foot, creating tension on one side and relaxation on the other.

Greek "cube."  A tiny stone or piece of glass cut to the desired shape and size for use in forming a mosaic.

In Buddhist thought, a potential Buddha who chooses not to achieve enlightenment in order to help save humanity.

A container for holding relics.

A varnish-like substance made from the sap of the Asiatic sumac tree, used to decorate wood and other organic materials.  Often colored with mineral pigments, laquer cures to great hardness and has a lustrous surface.

In ancient China, jade disks carved as ritual objects for burial with the dead.  They were often decorated with piercings that extended entirely through the object, as well as with surface carvings.

The space between two columns, or one unit in the nave arcade of a church; also, the passageway in an arcuated gate.

In Buddhism, an account of a sermon by or a dialogue involving the Buddha.  A scriptural account of the Buddha.

A Chinese ceramic technique in which the design is incised through a colored slip.

Plural tumulus.