The Queen under attack—A rejoinder

Abstract

The object once known as the Burney Relief, and now renamed The Queen of the Night (hereinafter referred to as the Queen) is a mould-made plaque of straw-tempered clay (Fig. 1). Integral with the rectangular background (49.5 × 37 cm) is a nude figure who wears the horned headdress of a Mesopotamian goddess, has lowered wings, dewclaws and bird's talons, holds the divine rod-and-ring symbol in each hand, stands on the backs of two addorsed lions, and is flanked by large owls. Traces of black, red and white paint survive. Since it was first published in the Illustrated London News on 13 June 1936, the plaque has been hailed as a masterpiece of ancient Mesopotamian art generally dated to the Old Babylonian period and, more specifically, to the age of Hammurabi (reigned 1792–1750 BC according to the Middle Chronology). After more than seven decades in private ownership, the plaque finally came into the public domain when, in 2003, the British Museum celebrated its 250th anniversary with the acquisition of this iconic work.One would expect such a unique piece to have its detractors, and in 1936–7 Dietrich Opitz published an article in which he raised doubts about its authenticity, although Van Buren, in her article appended to his (1936–7), came out in favour of the plaque. Then “a seminal article by Henri Frankfort (1937–9)… caused Opitz (1937–9) to change his mind” (Curtis and Collon 1996: 91–2), and other major scholars have agreed with Frankfort, including Thorkild Jacobsen (1987).In 1970, Pauline Albenda published a short article that focused on two features of the plaque's iconography, namely the “ring and rod” (normally referred to as rod-and-ring) symbols held by the goddess, and the overlapping lions on which she stood. These led her to “conclude that the Burney relief is not genuine”. In 2005, she revived the debate in an article in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. I shall consider in turn the various points she raises (giving the relevant page numbers in brackets) and seek to demonstrate why I think her arguments to be flawed and why I am convinced that the Queen of the Night is a genuine work of the age of Hammurabi of Babylon.