The statuette, unique in style and iconography, depicts a nude woman with a suckling child. The lion identifies the figure as a deity although the characteristic head-dress with one or more pairs of horns is missing. However, the base-like top on the head could either be part of a composite crown or the support of a lost object.
Since Prehistoric times representations of nude women were popular in religious beliefs or rather in household cults. Nursing infants or voluptuous curves emphasize their maternal aspects and indicate that these images served not only as symbols for human fertility, but also for agriculture and nature. Within the Ancient Near Eastern pantheon Inanna/Ishtar was worshiped as the goddess of love and sexuality; in addition to the incessant cycle of life and death the deity was also known as the goddess of war. In Syria and Anatolia, where the statuette may have been manufactured, these two aspects were combined by the goddesses Astarte and the Hurrian Shaushga. [Nadja Cholidis]
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