The Queen of the Night is today best known for her leading role in The Magic Flute, but for Babylonian historians the star of the show is an ancient goddess with the same name. Although almost 4,000 years old, she was only given her evocative title in 2003, soon after the British Museum paid £1.5 million to a Japanese art collector for the exceptionally large plaque bearing her image. She had first appeared in London almost 70 years earlier, although little is known about her long journey from southern Iraq. A mystery when she arrived, the Queen of the Night has guarded her secrets closely: despite intense scholarly scrutiny, her identity remains unknown.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the British Museum’s chief curators, Dominique Collon, scoffed at the suggestion that this expensive acquisition once adorned a shrine in a brothel. She explained that the Queen’s elaborate headdress and large wings indicate her status as a goddess, a conclusion confirmed by the sacred emblems of a rod and ring in each of her uplifted hands. Used for surveying land, these were measuring instruments that represented ownership and divine rule. It seems that the Babylonians appreciated the maxim ‘knowledge is power’ long before the discredited lord chancellor Francis Bacon achieved fame as a philosophical guru.

After initial doubts, experts now generally accept that the Queen is genuinely ancient – but pinning down the date and place of her creation has proved more difficult. Stylistic comparisons and modern dating tests agree that this unusually fine clay artefact was fired during the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), who expanded the small city-state of Babylon into a trading empire renowned for its scientific, literary and artistic prowess: on a large slab now residing in Paris, he too is holding an emblematic rod and ring. She probably originated from somewhere near Ur, the site of a god showing marked similarities – although dissenters from that view point to other possibilities.

Fortunately, substantial traces of paint have survived through the centuries, and the museum has been able to create a digital reconstruction approximating her appearance. With her black hair, red ochre body, brightly patterned feathers and weighty golden jewellery, this goddess is a striking and strongly sexualised figure who appears to emerge from the sooty darkness behind her – hence her label. Although her eye sockets are now hollow, they were probably inlaid with fine blue lapis lazuli and white shell. Her legs end in large talons; resembling those of the unnaturally stylised owls flanking her on either side, they grip two grimacing lions that are highlighted with white gypsum and hold themselves alert as if on guard. At the bottom, the rows of scales are a conventional Mesopotamian pattern for depicting mountains and hills.

The Queen of the Night was evidently an important goddess who enjoyed considerable status – but who was she? The arguments began long ago when she made her media debut in the Illustrated London News of 13 June 1936, but there is still no definitive answer.

Problematic owls

One prime candidate is the Babylonian goddess of love and war, who was widely worshipped at shrines and religious centres throughout the region. Confusingly, she was known as Inanna in Sumerian and as Ishtar in the other main Mesopotamian language, Akkadian. According to one myth, when Inanna/Ishtar was dressing for the funeral of her brother-in-law, she devised an unsuitable costume comprising provocative clothes and ornaments. Sibling rivalries clearly ran high: her older sister, Ereshkigal, ordered that she be gradually stripped naked as she passed through the seven gates of the Underworld. As a final punishment, Ereshkigal stipulated that the transgressor be converted into a joint of rotten meat – but Inanna/Ishtar eluded that fate by recruiting two substitute gods, her ex-husband and his sister, who each ruled over the Underworld for six months of every year.

There are some convincing arguments to support the Inanna/Ishtar hypothesis. According to mythological accounts, she lived in the mountain tops to the east of Mesopotamia, which would explain the pattern below the lions’ bodies; moreover, when she descended into the Underworld she took with her a ring and rod made of lapis lazuli that were similar to those brandished by the Queen of the Night. Two other iconographical details seem to fit: as the goddess of war, she was often shown riding on the back of a lion; and because of her association with Venus, she was sometimes depicted with wings rising from her shoulders.

Unfortunately, there are also good reasons to refute this identification. One of them was highlighted as far back as 1936, when the caption to the Queen’s first published photograph read: ‘Ishtar … the Sumerian goddess of love, whose supporting owls present a problem’. As critics continue to point out, owls do not feature in other Mesopotamian images, and the bird associated with Inanna/Ishtar looks very different. She was also conventionally shown in profile, not full-face. To clinch the critics’ objections, she was usually accompanied by one lion rather than two – and many of the Queen’s attributes were not specific to her but could have belonged to any of several other goddesses.

From the Underworld 

Could the Queen in fact be Ereshkigal, the ‘Lady of the Great Place’ who was Inanna/Ishtar’s vengeful older sister? Appointed Queen of the Underworld at the beginning of time, she presided over the dark palace of Ganzir that was haunted by winged demons with talons, while dead beings drifted around naked or wrapped in wings like birds, nourished only by water and dust. Since this was the land of no return, not even Ereshkigal was free to leave: in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, a poet described her devoid of clothes, tearing out her hair with her fingernails.

The Babylonian Underworld was said to be reached by a stairway leading down to Ereshkigal’s palace, although sometimes it was located in the eastern mountains, which would correspond to the scale pattern at the bottom. Several other features also support the hypothesis: as a goddess, Ereshkigal would have worn a horned headdress and carried a measuring rod and ring, while the downward-pointing wings and owls are often associated with the underworld and death. But what about the lions? And why would such a splendid effigy be made of someone so closely associated with death? In the absence of any further evidence, this seems a tenuous identification.

Unlikely demon 

The third contender is still hotly disputed. Recently resurrected as a character in a fantasy adventure series, Lilith is mentioned in the Bible as a demoness plaguing the devastated land of Edom. She may or may not correspond to the earlier Mesopotamian Lilitu, and is best known from her inclusion in a fresco by Michelangelo Buonarroti on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where she features as a muscly naked woman handing an apple to Eve, her serpentine tail coiled round a tree. According to one of several legends, after a spell as Adam’s first wife, this evil spirit was exiled from the Garden of Eden because she flouted God’s plans for the human race by refusing to have sex with her husband. Belonging to a triad of demons, she wreaked havoc among human populations by making men impotent, threatening pregnant women and spreading disease among babies.

Running a poor third in the contest to identify the Queen of the Night, Lilith can stake one major claim: her association with owls. The tawny owl, known to the ancient Greeks as the screech owl, was the sacred bird of Hades and an omen of bad luck portending death. There are indeed two owls on the plaque – but they are barn owls, which have distinctive heart-shaped faces and are usually considered as harbingers of good fortune. As a further problem for this hypothesis, Lilith’s demonic nature would seem to preclude her from being portrayed as a goddess, especially as the cuneiform sign for a goddess has never been found in front of her name. In any case, why dare to represent an inherently evil creature who might bring bad luck?

Hybrid deity

Perhaps a clue lies in the impossibility of reconciling these competing theories? The Queen’s curvaceous body contrasts with her ferocious clawed feet and the strange protrusions reminiscent of a dog’s dewclaws on the sides of her calves, suggesting yet another possibility – that she was originally intended as a hybrid deity. And might the rod and ring not be measuring instruments, but symbols of cosmic male and female principles?

Still unidentified, this captivating woman stares out serenely, an enigmatic smile slightly twisting her lips. Even today, the only thing that is certain about her identity is that nobody knows for sure.

Patricia Fara is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. Her most recent book is Life after Gravity: The London Career of Isaac Newton (Oxford University Press, 2021).