ART REVIEW : MAN MEETS MYTHS AND BEASTS

See the Egyptian king as sphinx, the queen as vulture, the dwarf as laughing lion. Observe the Mesopotamian gods as human-headed bulls, winged griffins and scorpion men. Consider the Luristan figures locked in mortal combat with fantastic beasts. And don’t forget the Islamic harpies.

Welcome to “Man and Beast: Mythical Images From Egypt and West Asia,” at the County Museum of Art through Aug. 25. It’s an uncommonly intriguing little show that focuses sharply on the blurred distinctions between humankind and animals in ancient cultures. Curators Nancy Thomas and Thomas W. Lentz have selected 63 thematically connected objects, made from the 35th Century BC to the 18th Century and mostly drawn from the museum’s collection.

A 29-inch-tall stone torso of the Egyptian lion-goddess Sekhmet (on loan from the Lowie Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley) guards the entrance of the show, on the plaza level of the Ahmanson Gallery. Once past her dignified, life-size presence, visitors downshift to nose-to-glass viewing, the better to see art as small as a thumbnail. Some of the images on Mesopotamian seals are so diminutive, the museum has provided photo enlargements of them.

All the objects--whether inch-square Eye-of-Horus amulets or eight-inch-tall Luristan finials--demand scrupulous examination and label reading to decipher their details. Even then, their full meanings remain elusive. Extreme age and unprofessional excavations have prevented historians from having the last word--and, in some cases, even reasonably precise speculation--about these ancient artworks, but Thomas and Lentz have provided a lay audience with enough text and aesthetic gratification to illuminate an appealing theme and indicate its mysterious pervasiveness.

The four territories of the show--Egypt, ancient West Asia, Luristan and Islam--offer distinctive forms of mythical imagery but also reveal continuity and cross-fertilization. Harpies (human-headed birds) and sphinxes (human-headed, winged lions) are particularly tenacious and well-traveled beings. A terra-cotta statue of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of fertility, bears Greek influence, while Islamic angels in a 16th-Century watercolor resemble their Christian counterparts.

The Egyptian section features 21 objects, from a bronze lion goddess with cobra headdress to a tiny amulet of a bird god in gold with stone inlays. Whether regal or comical, these magical artworks call up anthropomorphic power.

The ancient West Asian material covers stone seals with carved images, pendants depicting the demon Pazuzu (who protected wearers from sickness caused by windstorms) and continues on the atrium level where the museum’s magnificent Assyrian reliefs return to public view. Three of the five immense alabaster panels depict Mesopotamian deities (with wings, horned caps or bird heads) bestowing blessings or performing ritual duties.

Probably the least is known about Iron Age objects from Luristan, but they are among the most visually rewarding pieces exhibited. Symmetrical finials and horse trappings are astonishingly sophisticated portrayals of figures and animals merged in the stylized flourishes of open curves and incised patterns. Typically, a master of animals stands in the center and staves off a matched pair of snarling felines.

Islamic art makes up the smallest and most recent segment, ranging from a ceramic bowl with a remarkably graceful drawing of a harpy to a fragment of a silk tomb cover. A lacquered box, with an elegant Sagittarius figure shooting a bow and arrow, proves that Islamic art is not devoid of human likenesses, as is commonly believed. Other evidence comes in watercolors from the “Book of Kings,” where we find snakes sprouting from the shoulders of a doomed king. According to legend, the snakes ate the brains of two people daily.

The development of Egyptian gods is well-documented, but there’s no easy way to tabulate the exact meanings of all the strange man-beast amalgamations in the exhibition. These mythical creatures were empowering devices, but they served functions both secular and religious. What is clear from their proliferation is that humankind did not consider itself separate from the animal kingdom in ancient times.

People identified with their animal sources of food, clothing and labor, assigned them specific spheres of influence and invoked their power, but they were also threatened by beastly ferocity. Life was a tenuous balance, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Egyptian priests wrapped themselves in panther skins to perform important ceremonies or that Mesopotamian leaders donned fish outfits to enlist the support of a deity.

If this seems primitive, consider the thoroughly American spectacle of Arkansas Razorback fans who ritually don red plastic hog heads and charge off to root for their university’s football team, yelling “Sooey.”