The Queen of the Night Relief (The Burney Relief) Unknown Artist Art Funded 2003 Dimensions 49.5 x 36 x 4.8 cm Vendor Mr Goro Sakamoto . These cookies cannot be turned off by the user unless you disable all cookies in your browser. The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed): (4,288 × 2,848 pixels, file size: 6.6 MB, MIME type: Commons is a freely licensed media file repository. Of the many studies Michelangelo produced for the Sistine Chapel, his study for the figure of Adam, acquired in 1926, is among the finest. Patai then describes the Burney plaque: Patai asserts that Ishtar is the direct descendent of the Sumerian Innana. Rafael Patai (The Hebrew Goddess 3rd ed. Clearly, the figure is that of Lilith, but some of the symbols are associated with Innana/Ishtar. Baked straw-tempered clay with traces of red, blank and white paint. Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. A large terracotta plaque with relief decoration showing a naked goddess, probably Ishtar, with wings and bird claws for feet. The rod and ring look like real measuring instruments. One cannot escape the sense of contradiction expressed in this image of a goddess. Similarly, Innana gives the "pukku and mikku" to Gilgamesh in Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree, but he uses them unwisely, causing grief to the women of Uruk. The horns of the headdress, bracelets, rod-and-ring symbols and the necklace are assumed to have had been colored yellow. These high-value elements in artifacts meant that they were looting during the many shifts of power and religions in the region. As an aside, there could also be a connection to the Egyptian ankh, which is generally said to mean "life" and is carried in the hands of gods and goddesses. There is another possibility. Wolkstein and Kramer (Innana: Queen of Heaven and Earth 1983) present a psychological comparison of Lilith and Innana in a discussion of Ereshkigal, goddess of the Underworld: Let us quote directly from Wolkstein and Kramer's translation of the Sumerian poem, The Descent of Innana, to get a picture of Innana herself as she enters the Underworld carying the me's, archetypal forms of personal and social life: From the foregoing it is clear that we have in the Burney relief an amalgamation of symbols and images that depict both Innana (the rod and ring, the shugurra crown, the lions, the owls, the beads and bracelets) and Lilith. Queen of the Night (Burney Relief) The “Queen of the Night “relief is a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief from about the 19th century BCE, depicting a winged goddess figure with bird’s talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon two lions. Enter your email address to receive our newsletter. She wears a horned headdress and holds a rod and ring in each of her raised hands. They are frequently described as measuring or survey instruments that could be symbols of kingship because they are given by a god to a king to use in laying out the temple. Original file (4,288 × 2,848 pixels, file size: 6.6 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 1977. “She stirs confusion and chaos against those who are disobedient to her.” The artifact was brought to London by a Syrian / Lebanese dealer around the 1930s, though its exact provenance is unknown. English: Burney, or the Queen of the Night, relief inside a display case. This terracotta plaque (37 cm wide by 49.5 cm high) is of undoubted authenticity and has been dated by the British Museum to 1800 B.C. Gilgamesh's misuse of the relationship they imply would explain the women's tears in Uruk. She wears a horned headdress and holds a rod and ring in each of her raised hands. Ur is one possible city of origin for the relief, but not the only one. The Burney Relief (named for the antiquities dealer who owned it in 1935) is one of the most important works of art from the Ancient Near East. Find out more about how to do this. 2003,0718.1 Description. It is also believed that the surface would have been smoothed with ochre paint. This work was acquired with assistance from the Wolfson Foundation. According to Baring and Cashford (The Myth of the Goddess 1991) it is probable that the plaque represents "Innana in her role as the goddess of sky, earth and underworld, Queen of the Great Above and the Great Below." Wolkstein and Kramer say (in a footnote on page 143) that "pukku and mikku" remain untranslated, but they may be symbols of kingship. 2003,0718.1 Description. Following Kramer's suggestion of "drum and drum stick", maybe Innana's ring and stick are the mysterious mikku and pukku. This relief is comparatively plain made of clay with no precious materials and survived, making it one of only two surviving significant, symbolic representations from the Old Babylonian period. Date: 29 January 2014, 16:26:38: Source: Own work: Author: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) Licensing. Previous view Next view6 of 36; See all views; Museum number. The feathers of her wings and the owls’ feathers were also colored red, alternating with black and white. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Wolkstein, Diane and Samuel Noah Kramer. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Patai, Rafael. The Burney Relief (named for the antiquities dealer who owned it in 1935) is one of the most important works of art from the Ancient Near East. The Queen of the Night Relief (The Burney Relief), Log Early images of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess associated with love and beauty, may have been primarily derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte images. Innana: Queen of Heaven and Earth. The "rod and the ring" have an oft repeated interpretation. This means you might see personalised or targeted adverts while browsing other websites. This unique plaque is larger than the many mass-produced terracotta plaques of devotional items, which were excavated in the house ruins of the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods. The Babylonian Ishtar usually has wings, but they are always outstretched, never folded as Lilith's. 8 characters with upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. In 1936 CE the Burney Relief was featured in the Illustrated London News highlighting the collection of one Sydney Burney who purchased the plaque after the British Museum passed on the offer to buy it. Full: Front. Traces of red pigment remain on the figure’s body. In the most general sense this symbol depicts another pair of opposites, encapsulation and connectivity and symbolizes the goddess' encapsulation of the natural world within her own body. Penguin/Arkana, London, Kramer, Samuel Noah. Manage your membership, curate your My Picks and, if you work in a museum or gallery, access support for you and your venue. account, The IP address from which the device accesses a client’s website or mobile application, Information about the geographic location of the device when it accesses a website or mobile application, Remember your login details and store your preferences, Create a better, more personalised experience, Help us understand how people interact with our website and how this could be improved, Make our advertising and communications efforts more efficient with measurement and targeting. Stylistic comparisons place the relief at the earliest into the Isin–Larsa period, or slightly later, to the beginning of the Old Babylonian period. The size of the plaque suggests it would have belonged in a shrine, possibly as an object of worship. Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience. The source therefore fails to establish relevance for the sentence about the Anzû relief … 1983. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.