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Pictorial register

A reference page linking a name, group, or concept to the materials that discuss it.

A band organizing imagery within a scene; counts may vary with the grouping of rows.

Warka Vase, Iraq Museum, IM19606, late fourth millennium BCE. Plants, animals and presentation; parts restored. Emblems link it to Inanna, while female identity remains unsettled. Photo, 2019
Warka Vase, Iraq Museum, IM19606, late fourth millennium BCE. Plants, animals and presentation; parts restored. Emblems link it to Inanna, while female identity remains unsettled. Photo, 2019© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SALicense · Image source

Text

A pictorial register is a horizontal band or organized field grouping images within a larger scene. A line or blank space may separate it from another register. Registers order people, actions and resources, but do not alone establish chronology or a map of the cosmos.

The WarkaUrukAncient city at Warka in southern Iraq, a major urban centre around 3200 BCE that preserved early writing and accounting tablets.Glossary · Click to read the explanation Vase illustrates the distinction: Perkins describes three principal registers, grouping plants and animals in the lowest level, while Reichel notes four decorated bands. Counting differs through subdivision, not through an extra missing image. The attached photograph shows the actual vessel and its bands, without reconstructing broken figures.[1][2]

References and notes

  1. Ann Louise Perkins (1949). The Comparative Archeology of Early Mesopotamia. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 25. University of Chicago. Printed pp. 135–136: vase, ruler and priestess possibilities; pp. 150–151: marble head, inlays, wig/headdress fastenings and modelling. Selected passages, not the entire book. Older chronology and terminology balanced against a modern catalogue. Return to the text ↑
  2. Clemens Reichel (2008). Cataloging the Losses: The Oriental Institute’s Iraq Museum Database Project. In G. Emberling & K. Hanson (eds), Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, OIMP 28; with D. George & M. Gibson, The Looting of the Iraq Museum Complex. Selected pp. 22–25 on looting and the reconstructed vase base; p. 57, Figure 3, visually inspected head entry: ca. 3000 BCE, white marble, height 21 cm. P. 59, Figure 5: four bands and ancient repair. Not the full volume. Recovery month varies internally and is not resolved here. Return to the text ↑

Research history

Substantive changes are retained here. Minor copy edits remain in the internal operational log.

  1. Edition 2 · 11 October 2026 · editor:aladmin

    Substantive record update

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IL Archive, «Pictorial register», Edition 2, https://ilarchive.com/en/entities/pictorial-register