A few weeks ago, we ran a feature with Muriel Asmar, the art curator who guided us through 20th-century Lebanese art. I genuinely think it is a must-read for anyone curious about the subject (it opens up a whole new world, honestly!). But there was one particular artwork I deliberately kept aside. Why? I wanted to save a little treasure for our midweek “something to know” from the creative world and give it the attention it deserves.

So, which artwork am I talking about? Rayyane Tabet’s Orthostates, which is actually not just one artwork, but an ongoing project. A series of 32 prints is now part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.

Why is this series so important to contemporary Lebanese art? How did Tabet create these works? And what does the curator encourage us to pay attention to?

At first glance, Orthostates by Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet looks like a bestiary: lions, sphinxes, winged beings, gods riding animals. But Tabet didn’t invent any of them. These creatures were carved in black basalt nearly 3,000 years ago, and the drawings are the latest chapter of a story that has survived kings, bombs and a civil war.

So where does the story start? Around 1899, at Tell Halaf, in what is now northeastern Syria, when the eccentric German diplomat and banker’s son Max von Oppenheim spotted enormous basalt statues sticking out of a mound. Excavating the site, he uncovered the palace of Kapara, an Aramaean ruler, guarded by monumental figures and lined with 194 carved stone slabs known as orthostates. They depicted hunters, mythical creatures and scenes of everyday life.

But these discoveries didn't simply end up together in some fancy museum. Instead, the collection was divided between different countries. Some reliefs remained in Syria, others went to Paris, while Oppenheim shipped around 80 to Berlin, where he opened a private museum in a former machine factory in 1930. 

The story took another dramatic turn in 1943, when an Allied bombing raid set Oppenheim's Berlin museum on fire. The heat was so intense that when firefighters sprayed water onto the scorching basalt sculptures, they shattered into thousands of fragments. Around 27,000 pieces were recovered, and decades later, restorers spent nine years putting the surviving sculptures back together. Quite literally, a giant archaeological puzzle.

With parts of the collection destroyed, others scattered across museums and some lost forever, the original ensemble could no longer be seen as a whole. And that brings us to Tabet, who had a rather unusual idea: What if he could reunite these scattered pieces without moving a single stone?

No brushes. No canvas. No drawing at all. Tabet used rubbing, the same trick you did as a kid with a coin under a sheet of paper: lay the paper over the coin, drag a pencil across it, and the portrait pops up as if by magic. Now swap the coin for a 3,000-year-old basalt relief, and the pencil for charcoal.

How did he do it? He travelled from museum to museum, pressed paper against the surviving slabs and rubbed, pulling the carvings’ surfaces straight onto the page. Every crack, chip and worn edge came with them. In a sense, these aren’t copies of the stones but their touch-prints.

In 2019, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired 32 of these works. Hung side by side, they achieve something rather extraordinary: images of slabs scattered across continents for decades finally share one wall again. And the missing slabs, you may ask? Unfortunately, they remain missing. But those gaps are part of the work, too.

First, because Orthostates does something rather unusual: it turns a technique traditionally used to document archaeological objects into a work of contemporary art. Tabet works with what already exists, but changes how we see it. What might have been a simple record of a stone carving becomes a question about history, ownership and loss.

But there is another layer to this story, and this one is surprisingly personal. Tabet’s great-grandfather, Faik Borkhoche, worked as a secretary to Max von Oppenheim, the very archaeologist who excavated Tell Halaf. And according to historical accounts, he had a second job: quietly reporting on his employer to the French authorities. A secretary and a spy in one person.

Tabet discovered this connection through family photographs and documents kept in Beirut. Suddenly, an archaeological story from neighbouring Syria turned out to be part of his own family history. What began as an investigation into ancient objects became something much more personal.

And that helps explain why Orthostates holds such an interesting place in contemporary Lebanese art. It touches on themes that many Lebanese artists have explored: fragmented histories, personal archives, colonial legacies and the fragile relationship between memory and what survives.

There is a twist, though. The work isn't directly about Lebanon. Its subject is Syrian heritage, explored through the family history of a Lebanese artist. And perhaps that is what makes it particularly compelling: it reminds us how closely the histories of the region are connected.