Ancient Near Eastern Art: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v ...

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weapons rising from her shoulders or
holding a distinctive lion-headed weapon.
Her right foot rests on a lion, her animal
attribute. Ishtar is a goddess to whom
rulers turned for aid, protection, and victory
in battle.
A small gold pendant (fig. 24) represents
a goddess worshiped in Anatolia.
The Hittite figure holds a child on her lap,
thus underscoring her role as a mother
goddess. The identity of this divinity remains
uncertain, but the wide, disklike
headdress may represent the sun and
the figure therefore may be a sun goddess.
Although the enthroned figure rests on a
flat podium or base, a loop attached to
the back of the headdress indicates that
this was a pendant, once suspended,
perhaps from a necklace similar to
the example from Mesopotamia in the
Museum's collection (see fig. 19). On
that necklace, small figures of another
benevolent goddess, Lama, are included
among the pendants.
Dancing female figures decorate a
Sasanian silver-gilt ewer (fig. 26), a ceremonial
or cult vessel of a type datable to
the sixth or early seventh century A.D.
The appearance of these images was
influenced by Roman representations of
maenads, female worshipers associated
with the cult of the Greek wine god
Dionysos, a complex divinity whose worship
was particularly widespread in the
ancient world. On the Sasanian vessels
the females are always in a dancing pose
and hold a select group of objects, including
grape-and-leaf branches, birds, animals,
and vessels. No texts remain from
this period to explain the appearance or
function of these females in the Sasanian
world, and we can only suppose that
they were associated with some court
festival of the Iranian year. P.O.H.
26
25