A special collection of ancient artifacts from Turkey’s Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum, in addition to relics from royal palaces and temples from the Near East, went on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on Tuesday.

Artifacts discovered in the wreckage of the world’s oldest-known seafaring ship, discovered in 1982 near Uluburun on the southern coast of Turkey, make up a major part of the exhibition, titled “Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.”
The exhibition is a joint effort by Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman and The Hagop Kevorkian Fund. Among the corporate sponsors are Turkey’s Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK), the Turkish-American Business Council and the Doğan, Doğuş, Koç and Sabancı holdings.

Turkish-American Business Council Chairman Haluk Dinçer told the Anatolia news agency that the council was working to promote Turkey as a brand abroad and that the exhibit was part of these efforts. Around 400 ancient artifacts are on display in “Beyond Babylon” and around half of these are from Turkey, Dinçer noted.

In addition to pieces from Uluburun, the show features nearly 350 objects from royal palaces, temples and tombs, highlighting a sophisticated network of interaction among kings, diplomats and merchants in the Near East in the second millennium B.C.

The 98 pieces recovered from the Uluburun shipwreck -- including hippopotamus ivory, along with copper and glass ingots, golden jewelry pieces and seals from Mesopotamia, Mycenaean Greece and Egypt -- perfectly display the trade relations of the time, according to Bodrum Underwater Archaeology Museum Director Yaşar Yıldız, who discovered the shipwreck himself 26 years ago.

The exhibit, assembled in chronological order, begins with the Middle Bronze Age. From Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in the south to Thrace, Anatolia, and the Caucasus in the north, and from regions as far west as mainland Greece all the way east to Iran, the great royal houses forged intense international relationships through the exchange of raw materials and goods as well as letters and diplomatic gifts. The exhibit traces the unprecedented movement of precious materials, luxury goods and people to showcase the transformation of the visual arts throughout a vast territory that spanned the ancient Near East and the eastern Mediterranean.

“Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.” will remain on view until March 15 on the Met’s second floor.

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