Dossiers

The Queen of the Night: The Mysterious Burney Relief

The Queen of the Night (also known as the "Burney Relief") is a high-relief terracotta plaque of baked clay, 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. The…

The Burney Relief's composite iconography — winged deity, owls, lions — appears across multiple ancient traditions simultaneously, raising the question of a shared symbolic grammar that predates the cultures expressing it.
The Queen of the Night: The Mysterious Burney Relief
Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/658/the-queen-of-the-night/

Original author: Joshua J. Mark

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mesopotamia

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