Queen of the Night

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    This spectacular terracotta plaque made almost four thousand years ago, is moulded in high relief with the figure of a Babylonian goddess from southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq). She is naked, and her drooping wings, bird's talons, and the presence of owls against what must once have been a dramatic black background would indicate that she was probably a goddess of the night or the underworld.

   From March 2004 she is visiting a number of venues in Britain that are all members of the British Museum's Partnership UK. The tour, funded through the generosity of the Dorset Foundation, is one of the many ways in which the British Museum makes its collections available to as wide a public as possible.

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