I learned this morning that Pierre Amiet, the longtime head curator of antiquités orientales at the Louvre has died. Amiet was one of the finest scholars of ancient Near Eastern art in the 20th century. I think of him as a French Edith Porada (which I mean as a high compliment). Like Porada, he was an expert on glyptic, especially Elamite glyptic, a field in which his scholarship remains fundamental. But also like Porada he was at home in a wide range of media, including sculpture, ivories and metalwork. I am especially appreciative of his work on ancient Iranian art, in particular his books Elam (1966) and L’âge des échanges inter-iraniens: 3500-1700 avant J.-C. (1986), both which were indispensable to me during my museum stints at Harvard and the Met.
Archaeologist, Art Historian, Sometime Curator, and Ocassional Classicist