THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Where Is the
Ancient Middle East?
Thousands of objects from the ancient Middle East are held in New York. Their museum records tell a story about where they came from — and how they arrived.
THE COLLECTION
6,126 objects.
Each mark represents one object in the Met’s Ancient Near Eastern Art collection.
WHERE THEY CAME FROM
The collection spans a wide geography.
The Met’s records trace objects across Mesopotamia, Iran, the Levant, Anatolia, Cyprus and beyond.
TWO LARGE CENTERS
Iran and Mesopotamia dominate the collection.
Together, they account for nearly seven in ten objects in the collection.
HOW THEY ARRIVED
The collection was assembled over generations.
For 6,074 objects with a recorded acquisition year, the Met’s records span from 1874 to 2015.
NOT AT A STEADY PACE
One decade stands out.
The 1930s brought 1,187 objects into the collection — more than any other decade in the records.
HOW THEY ENTERED THE MET
They did not all arrive the same way.
The museum’s credit lines describe purchases, gifts, bequests, expeditions and exchanges. For many objects, the method is not explicit.
THE 1930s
So what happened here?
The 1,187 objects acquired during the 1930s were not one uniform group.
A CLUE IN THE CREDIT LINES
879 carry the Rogers Fund name.
The credit line appears again and again in the decade’s records — especially among Persian and Sasanian objects.
FOLLOWING THE RECORD
The credit line is only the beginning.
“Rogers Fund” appears across hundreds of 1930s records. To learn more, individual Met object pages provide additional details about where some objects were excavated.
CTESIPHON, IRAQ
Some records lead to Ctesiphon.
According to the Met, it joined Berlin’s Staatliche Museen for an excavation at Ctesiphon in 1931–32. The Met says finds were first divided with Iraqi authorities and then between Berlin and New York.
SOURCE: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
QASR-I ABU NASR, IRAN
Other records lead near Shiraz.
The Met says its archaeologists excavated Qasr-i Abu Nasr for three seasons from 1932 to 1935. Met object records from the site include Sasanian material credited to the Rogers Fund in 1934 and 1936.
SOURCE: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
THE OBJECTS THEMSELVES
Behind every mark is an object.
These Met records connect the abstract patterns in the data to individual objects excavated at Ctesiphon and Qasr-i Abu Nasr.
IMAGES AND OBJECT DATA: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
METHODOLOGY
What exactly did this analysis count?
This project analyzes 6,126 object records from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access dataset that were classified under the museum’s Ancient Near Eastern Art department when the data was downloaded.
This is not a count of every Met object associated with ancient West Asia. The Met says the department, now called Ancient West Asian Art, cares for approximately 7,000 works. Objects connected to the region may also appear elsewhere in the museum’s collection.
Geography in this project was grouped from the Met’s own geographic fields. Acquisition categories were derived conservatively from the museum’s credit lines. When a credit line did not explicitly identify an acquisition method, the object was classified as unspecified.
Of the 6,126 records analyzed, 6,074 included a recorded acquisition year. Historical context about Ctesiphon and Qasr-i Abu Nasr is attributed directly to the Met’s own object and collection pages.
The Open Access data used for this analysis were downloaded in August 2026; collection records may be updated over time.
SOURCES: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
OBJECT RECORDS
WITH ACQUISITION YEAR
RECORDED ACQUISITION-YEAR RANGE