Illustration
The Queen of the Night (also known as the Burney Relief) is a high relief terracotta plaque of baked clay, measuring 19.4 inches (49.5 cm) high, 14.5 inches (37 cm) wide, with a thickness of 1.8 inches (4.8 cm) depicting a naked winged woman flanked by owls and standing on the backs of two lions. It originated in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) most probably in Babylonia, during the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE) as it shares qualities in craftsmanship and technique with the famous diorite stele of Hammurabi’s laws and also with the piece known as 'The god of Ur' from that same period. The woman depicted is acknowledged to be a goddess as she wears the horned headdress of a deity and holds the sacred rod-and-ring symbol in her raised hands. Who the winged woman is, however, has not been agreed upon, though scholars generally believe her to be either Inanna (Ishtar), Lilith, or Ereshkigal. (The British Museum, London)
License & Copyright
Based on Wikipedia content that has been reviewed, edited, and republished.
Original image by Davide Ferro. Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 19 February 2014. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
Related Images
Queen of the Night, Old Babylon
Queen of the Night Detail
Queen of the Night or Burney's Relief, Mesopotamia
The Queen of The Night Relief
The Queen of the Night Reconstruction
Ishtar's Descent into the Underworld Inscription
Cite This Work
APA Style
Ferro, D. (2014, February 19). Queen of the Night Plaque. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2314/queen-of-the-night-plaque/
Chicago Style
Ferro, Davide. "Queen of the Night Plaque." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified February 19, 2014. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2314/queen-of-the-night-plaque/.
MLA Style
Ferro, Davide. "Queen of the Night Plaque." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 19 Feb 2014. Web. 20 Feb 2025.
