Page 125: The Queen of the Night

Once known, less evocatively, as the "Burney Relief", the Queen of the Night is an incredibly interesting artifact housed in an otherwise sort of dry room at the British Museum.

The Queen of the Night dates from the second millennium BC (~1800 BC) and depicts the goddess Ishtar, also known as Inanna, Astarte and other names (more on Ishtar later). The Queen of the Night, quite clearly, has wings and a, ahem, robust figure.

The big question, to me, is "why are so many of the early gods and goddesses bird-people?" Especially the most powerful ones? Of course, the rational mind says, it is only natural that ancient people would meld human traits with those of powerful, wonderful, magical animals when "creating" gods and goddesses. The same way that we modern humans tend to make bad aliens look like scary bugs. But have you actually looked at our modern scary aliens? They often ARE bugs (or, otherwise, elongated or foreshortened people). We really show very little imagination at all, we just computer-render what we see.

How about the ancients? Were the ancient carvers imagining things, or just creating portraits?

Here's the official article on the Queen:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/t/queen_of_the_night_relief.aspx