MAAAT-QN-BM-001Document

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

On the British Museum's own preferred reading (Collon 2007, following Porada 1980), the figure represents Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, in which case the plaque carries a direct chthonic and funerary significance, anchored in the architecture of the seven-gated underworld described in Inanna's Descent and in the myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal . Owl companions, hanging (non-spread) wings, originally black background and bird talons all point to the realm of the dead in Mesopotamian cosmology; in Tablet XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh the underworld is populated by creatures "clothed like birds, with a garment of wings"

Origin

Southern Iraq, Telloh (ancient Girsu)

Current repository

British Museum

Period

Old Babylonian (Isin-Larsa), c. 1800–1750 BCE;

No remote collection record is available.