Before I begin I want to get something clear: I am an
archaeologist who specialises in Near Eastern/Egyptian iconography, BUT, I have
also been a professional artist for my entire adult life, so I am an enormous
fan of modern reception of the ancient Near East. I even run a fb group for this and make
reception pieces myself, it is fun.
What I am not a fan of, is the proliferation of modern
reception being used as examples of the real thing on Pinterest, Wiki, and a multitude of
Christian and neo-pagan blogs and websites (plus some pseudo-history pages that
purport to educate the masses).
This post will look at some viral ‘fake’ artefacts on the interweebs. They are not really originally fakes, btw… I
assume the artists will have probably made them as freestanding artworks and as homage.
Other people have turned the copies into fakes by
taking the image out of context. However, most of these images are so prolific that their original artist
is long forgotten. Basically, because
the individuals stealing these images don’t give a crap who made them. They believe they are OLD and REAL.
1) The ivory lid from Ugarit
Left: REAL, the Minet el Beida ivory pyxis lid from tomb III, Minet el Beida, Ugarit, Syria. 13th century, Late Bronze Age.
Image ©
Louvre Museum, Paris. Right: MODERN COPY.
These copies amuse me, because the reception pieces consistently
misinterpret the imagery on the original object (above left). On a
multitude of dodgy internet sites the female figure can be described
as any goddess from Ugaritic Anath, Asherah or Ashtart, to Assyrian Ishtar,
and Sumerian Inana (wrong millennium kids). Some even call her Phoenician Ashtarte or biblical Ashtoreth (again, wrong millennium).
This object and its copies are interesting because they appear
to have influenced modern artists regarding the design of costume for Near Eastern
goddesses beyond this one group.
Which I must say is a misleading assumption, because the original ivory lid is
in hybrid style and has mostly Aegean features.
It may even be a Mycenaean object.
So it may not be Near Eastern at all.
However, the lid is fairly unique and has no clear parallels in Syria (a
goddess between rampant animals is damn near everywhere in the late Late Bronze
Age).
Left and Right: MODERN COPY (right is the same plaque after photoshop)
So what has changed on the reception pieces? Quite a bit… Both artists change the rampant goats of the original lid to horses (horses don't have beards), and the
sheaths of wheat or leafy vegetation in her hands are given eyes and altered to
snakes.
A few sites therefore call her a
snake goddess. On two copies she is standing on human skulls,
rather than the grainy undulating ground of the original … Some bright spark clearly wanted a chthonic
goddess with all those skulls and snakes.
After this she also appears to have influenced pieces that
are not direct copies
Above is an 'Astarte' from various pagan commercial sites that sell
reception trinkets. It is probably worth
mentioning we don’t know who the goddess is, if it is one... One thing is pretty sure, she is not Mesopotamian.
2) Astarte
Left: REAL, Gold sheet plaque from Lachish, 14-13th century, Late Bronze Age Levant. Image
© Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Right: MODERN COPY.
This one is actually just a nice little homage copy of the original plaque, no major errors or cavalier changes. She is again a Late Bronze Age hybrid piece with this time Levantine and Egyptian characteristics. She is from a city and time frame when the Levant was under Egyptian rule, so a fusion goddess makes perfect sense…
Again, nothing particularly Mesopotamian to see here.
I would leave it alone, but for Wikipedia having the gall to call it the original plaque. And naturally it is used by cheerful pop-history (Mr P’s Mythopedia), conspiracy theory (Mesopotamian Gods and Kings) and neo-pagan sites as the real object. Yet again, you can basically pick any high profile Near Eastern goddess and she will be called this, even though actual experts are still arguing over whether she is Anath, Qudshu or Astarte.
I would leave it alone, but for Wikipedia having the gall to call it the original plaque. And naturally it is used by cheerful pop-history (Mr P’s Mythopedia), conspiracy theory (Mesopotamian Gods and Kings) and neo-pagan sites as the real object. Yet again, you can basically pick any high profile Near Eastern goddess and she will be called this, even though actual experts are still arguing over whether she is Anath, Qudshu or Astarte.
3) Inana?
Left: MODERN FORGERY, Early 20th century. Image © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Right: MODERN REWORKING of early 20th century forgery.
A reception goddess that is ironically a copy of a fake
goddess that is a copy of a real Minoan votive figurine. Exhausting just to think about it … but to be
pedantic: no Mesopotamian goddess here either.
The source for these modern and almost modern copies are
votive figures in faience and bronze from Minoan Crete, dating to around 1600 BCE. When Arthur Evans discovered the first figurines in the early 1900s he used a
resourceful bunch of guys to restore them and he was totally cool with their
making a bit of cash on the side selling antiquities. The original ‘goddesses’ were so popular that
the art market was just a tad desperate to get some and his trained restorers stepped
up to the mark and flooded the market with very good fakes.
The reception plaque is a modern interpretation of the Fitzwilliam
Museum fake Minoan ‘goddess’ figurine, plus perhaps a couple of
fragments of fakes that Evan’s published. Authentic Minoan votive figures have quite
specific arm gestures and do not clasp their breasts like goddesses on Syro-Levantine
votive figures and seals.
This plaque is
labelled the goddess Inana on various internet sites, or the Inana of Crete, whatever that means.
For the Minoan forgeries see KDS. Lapatin 2001. 'Snake Goddesses, Fake Goddesses.' Archaeology - https://archive.archaeology.org/0101/abstracts/goddess.html
4) Ishtar
Left: REAL, Ishtar from Eshnunna, Iraq. 2000-1500 BCE. Image © Louvre, Paris. Right: MODERN COPY.
This plaque (right) is obviously a fan copy of the original,
as it resembles it relatively closely.
The original is a clay plaque in the Louvre of the goddess Ishtar,
that is from Eshnunna. We know it is
Ishtar because of her attributes, the quite specific sceptre, the lion (under her foot) and the diadem of a high god. The artist here however has reinterpreted the details
and clearly not understood some idiom, such as the lion and the lion sceptre, but otherwise it is kinda
cute.
It is again used on various Mesopotamian history pages as
the real deal. I particularly enjoyed
the caption on Mesopotamian Gods and Kings: ‘Inanna with liberty torch’. Not only is she described as an alien nephilim giant, but she was also the goddess of
liberty… because, wait for it... the badly copied sceptre is really a torch like the American statue of liberty holds… cue eye roll.
On the upside it is a copy of a Mesopotamian goddess.
On the upside it is a copy of a Mesopotamian goddess.
5) Ereshkigal
This figurine was most probably creatively sourced from
the same Louvre plaque with the goddess Ishtar from Eshnunna,
or something similar like seals, but the claws for hands clearly reference the British
Museum Queen of the Night (Burney Relief) plaque. Personally, I suspect the Ugarit lid copies
have had some input in the design too, with that uncharacteristic skull and the
patterns on the flounces. But that is after
all artistic licence.
Modern goddess by Netjerwaret
The modern reception artwork was made by the profile Netjerwaret at Deviant
Art, but no blame may lay at their door that dodgy history sites like Mr P’s
Mythopedia and Mesopotamian Gods and Kings call it a real ancient statue of
Ereshkigal.
Handy hint for the uninitiated:
There are at this point in time no confirmed ancient images of the
Mesopotamian underworld goddess Ereshkigal in any medium in any collection in the world. We don't know what she looked like. The closest we come to one is the Queen of
the Night plaque goddess and this connection is hotly disputed, because if the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians avoided depicting the goddess of the dead, she is unlikely to be her.
6) ‘Ninhursag’
The final plaque (below right) is again a respectable copy of the
original object, there are as usual minor details where the artist misread the
content, like her missing left hand and the loss of her horned crown, but it is
a lovely piece of reception nonetheless.
Left: REAL, goddess on a vase fragment naming Enmetena of Lagash,ca. 2400 BCE,
© Vorderasiatisches Museen, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Right: COPY, woodcut by Nicholas Fasciano.
The copy was most likely commissioned for the book by Samuel
Noah Kramer that it illustrates, ‘History Begins at Sumer’ which is a perennial favourite that was
published in the 1950s and has been republished repeatedly since then. The goddess
is one of four woodcuts in the book by American illustrator Nicholas
Fasciano. It is called 'Ninhursag' by Kramer.
The original object (left) is a fragment from a votive
vessel that names the king Enmetena of Lagash (ca. 2400 BCE) that is in Berlin. The tablet records the dedication of a temple
to Inana, but also mentions Nanshe and Ninhursag, with both goddesses being
possibilities for the goddess depicted here. However, the Berlin museum
describes her as Nisaba. The iconography is not overly specific, but she holds
dates and has grain or vegetation in her crown, so a vegetation goddess is very
likely.
The copy is another prolific mislabelled image on the
internet and is used as an authentic ancient object on a multitude of pop
history, neo-pagan and downright crazy sites, who embellish their descriptions
with all sorts of interesting attributes for Ninhursag, the Sumerian birth
goddess. Some even try to give it a legitimate provenance, like Looklex
Encyclopaedia who claim the woodcut is from the temple of Ninhursag at Tall
al-Ubayd… No it isn’t.
But the winner for complete nonsense reception again goes to
Mesopotamian Gods and Kings with their farcical description of Ninhursag
involving the planet Nibiru, mixed breed races of creation, plus calling the
mythical king Lugalbanda her ‘giant mixed breed son’… say what?
On the upside again at least it is originally a
Mesopotamian goddess.
The copy incidentally came with three other woodcuts of gods
that are also viral online as the real objects, but these will have to be the topic of a
future blog post.
***
In summary, sourcing pictures of ancient goddesses from unreliable sites: Don’t do it, it’s a trick
Seriously guys, you really can’t trust the internet to
provide you with reliable and authentic images of ancient Mesopotamian
gods.
Andrea Sinclair 2018
Postscript
7) Inana
7) Inana
"in astronaut
flight suit with helmet that has goggles"
First of
all … subjective much?
Now I have
that off my chest, there is another viral image that may be found on any tin
foil hat wearing page that pays homage to Sitchin on the net. However, as with all the previous ladies this example is a reception piece that is an interpetation of a drawing from 1922.
Left: the real plaque from the Ishtar temple at Aššur. Right: an artist's interpretation
of the pigment decoration. Both from Andrae 1922, plates 27a and 28c.
of the pigment decoration. Both from Andrae 1922, plates 27a and 28c.
The
original object is a 20cm high fragmentary gypsum plaque that Walter Andrae
excavated in the early 20th century in the
Ishtar temple at Aššur in Iraq.
It was found in a room adjacent to the main cult room in layer H which dates to
the Early Dynastic III (ca. 2500 BCE). There were traces of paint on the plaque,
so the excavators did a line drawing to try to reproduce the colour designs.
There is no guarantee that the original drawing is an
entirely accurate reconstruction. In the
1920s illustrators have been known to improvise. It is clearly not drawn to scale.
The
identification of the plaque as Inana also cannot be guaranteed, as experts are
still disputing whether the Mesopotamian frontally posed naked goddess is an aspect of this goddess
or another separate goddess. Offerings
of figurines in temples are not goddess specific, and it was possible for other
gods to have cult places within the main building of a god. It incidentally does not appear to be a wall sculpture (contra Sitchin).
Left: black and white image from Sitchin 1976. Right: REPLICA from the Herschel blog.
The modern
copy of a drawing of a drawing is from the web site of Wayne Herschel, a rabid
devotee of Zecharia Sitchin who has worked out how to make a dollar or three by
selling expensive “replicas” to fans. Herschel
claims that Sitchin found the plaque in the Iran museum, and this is the story
all over the internet. An easy mistake I
guess, Iran/Iraq, q and n are so easily confused. It is actually in the British Museum (distribution of finds). Sitchin himself cites Andrae and the
Ishtar temple in his book.
“The team headed by Andrae found yet another unusual depiction of Ishtar at her temple in Ashur.
More a wall sculpture than the usual relief, it showed the goddess with a tight-fitting decorated
helmet with the “earphones” extended as though they had their own flat antennas,
and wearing very distinct goggles that were part of the helmet.”
More a wall sculpture than the usual relief, it showed the goddess with a tight-fitting decorated
helmet with the “earphones” extended as though they had their own flat antennas,
and wearing very distinct goggles that were part of the helmet.”
You have
got to admire how much information can be gleaned from a black and white line
drawing of a small plaque, but Sitchin’s claims about ancient astronauts are a
whole separate issue and he too approached facts with a generous tablespoon of
salt. I could not possibly tackle his
nonsense here.
Regardless,
in this case we have a chain of outcomes beginning with a
pseudo-science interpretation from the 1970s, and then another individual has
added confusion by desiring to cash in on this craze by writing his own book
and selling the public expensive replicas.
The object you see on the web is a 3 dimensional modern interpretation
of a black and white drawing that is a copy of a polychrome drawing of a
scruffy broken plaque from 1922 … confused yet?
The real gypsum plaque looks like this... TA DA!!!
 |
| Goggles, what goggles? British Museum: 118996 |
References
W. Andrae 1922. Die
Archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur.
Z. Sitchin
1976. The 12th Planet.
W. Herschel:
http://www.thehiddenrecords.com/ancient-artifact-replicas.php
Museum Websites
Louvre ivory lid
http://cartelfr.louvre.fr/cartelfr/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=21506&langue=fr
Louvre Ishtar
http://cartelfr.louvre.fr/cartelfr/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=24776&langue=fr
Israel Museum gold plaque
http://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/393974?itemNum=393974
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/cockerell/pigstytopalace/antiquities
Berlin goddess
http://www.smb-digital.de/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=1743571&viewType=detailVie
British Museum plaster goddess
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1922-0812-44
