|
The exhibition was the third such study exhibition with items from this best known archaeological site in Serbia (the last was held twenty-five years ago) displaying unique anthropomorphic sculptures that are several thousand years old i.e. made during the millennia that preceded the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian cultures.
One of the most significant pre-historic (Mesolithic) finds in Europe was discovered in the 1960s during research of terrain to build a new hydro-electrical power plant (Djerdap) on the Danube. The man who headed the group of researchers, Academician Dragoslav Srejović, along with a team of his associates, discovered the ancient monument of a very old and at that time still unknown pre-historic culture. Indeed, the findings would change the way we thought about the beginnings of European and world civilisations. These pre-historic communities, dwelling on the banks of a big river, were the creators of the oldest sacral architecture and monumental sculptures in Europe that we know. Certainly, the most significant and interesting finds from the Lepenski Vir archaeological site are the monumental anthropomorphic sculptures displayed at this exhibition that "represent an autonomous spiritual creation of hunters and gatherers of Djerdap and most directly testify to the complex social structure of this society."
The thematic exhibition put together by Ljubinka Babović, museum counselor, longtime associate of Dragoslav Srejović and curator of the Lepenski Vir collection at the Belgrade National Museum, affords not only a fresh experience of archaeology and Mesolithic art but also offers a new interpretation of these outstanding pieces as the face of the Sun God:
– Lepenski Vir is an hierotopos – a sacred place or mythical space of the people of the culture of the same name, a place hosting the presence of the Divine in which lies a complex of temples devoted to the Sun God. In the religion and culture of Lepenski Vir, the Sun God appears as the supreme divinity, the creator of the world, experienced, seen and understood as anthropomorphic, as borne out by The Secret of Lepenski Vir – the Face of the Sun God from the Seventh Millennium B.C. exhibition.
These unparalleled works of art, religious in character, show anthropomorphic divinity heads, evincing through symbolic images certain epiphanic moments of God in the annual cycle of his movement and creation in time and space. The exhibited anthropomorphic sculptures with cocoon-like bodies and zoomorphic elements are symbolic metaphors and allegoric mimeses of a gender-divided world life the Sun divinity is ushering into existence.
The opportunity to see, surmise and experience in the fullness of form and content, the face and representationality of the Sun God, a god of such great antiquity, more than adequately unveiled in terms of space, time and material, demonstrates that the exhibition author’s approach is in full harmony with the exhibits.
Due to the ongoing reconstruction of the Belgrade National Museum building, The Secret of Lepenski Vir – the Face of the Sun God from the Seventh Millennium B.C. exhibition is being held in the hall of the National Bank of Serbia building at no. 17 Nemanjina St. It is open everyday, except Mondays, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. through the end of the year.
| 
