Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

There are many ways that the human form can represent ideas and values held by specific cultures. At times, images and 3-dimensional creations of the body have been used to promote individuals, or document moments in history. Another common use of human figure is to depict a deity or god. This can be in the form of explaining their origins, telling important tales about them, or the purpose of worship. Through the course of time different cultures had different solutions for what the human form represents, and how to use it for their artistic, political, and social purposes. In the Ancient Near East, the society of Susa in Iran used the human form in the Victory Steele of Naram-Sim (Gardner, 2-13). From the 23rd century b.c.e., this piece shows many people of varying sizes in a stacked composition. The figures on top are larger, showing that they have more importance. This is a hierarchy of scale, in which the least important members of the culture and the image are