Bitumen artifacts from Suse in the Louvre Museum

Description

Jacques Connan, Odile Deschesne. Le bitume à Suse - collection du musée du louvre. Paris: 1996, softcover, quarto format, 444 pages. Fine copy. Unusual and unique collection of bitumen objects from Suse in the Louvre Museum, presented here with a fully illustrated catalog and original scholarly study. Common uses of bitumen have been known since the Neolithic period: construction, caulking, various sealings, and other now-obsolete applications including medicine, antisepsis, and magic. From the 4th millennium BC onwards, bitumen also appears as a component of composite material—bitumen mastic—used as a stone substitute by sculptors. This book's first revelation is the archaeometric study of this mastic, whose composition and manufacturing process were previously unknown. Another discovery: the artistic and plastic qualities of the Louvre collection, previously known and appreciated only by specialists. The collection includes both modest everyday objects and prestigious items decorated in high relief: vessels, stamps, cylinder seals, comparable in form and iconography to objects created in the same periods from stone, particularly alabaster. These results emerge from the convergence of two disciplines as distinct in their practices and objectives as archaeology and chemistry.