Visitors to museums have long been accustomed to seeing ancient sculpture literally in black and white. The fact that Greek sculpture was painted continues to surprise some people. This is also true for Mesopotamian stone sculpture, although few traces of color have always been visible to the naked eye. This is changing as in the 21st century new ways of retrieving and interpreting those traces are now available.For the similar problem of recovering the colors of the Arch of Titus, see here and links. For a recent book on color in ancient Mesopotamia, see here. For posts on language and ancient color perception, see here and links.[...]
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