Naomi F. Miller, a Consulting Scholar, Near East Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, has published an article dealing with symbols of fertility and abundance at Ur. Below is the abstract of the article:

Fertility and abundance are important themes of ancient Mesopotamian texts and images. The goddess Inanna and her consort Dumuzi personify these ideas in texts of the second millennium B.C.E.

Excavated by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, the Royal Cemetery at Ur dates to the mid third millennium B.C.E. Among the tombs, that of Queen Puabi yielded many ornaments of gold, carnelian, and lapis. Some of the pendants realistically depict identifiable animals. Others are more stylized depictions of clusters of apples, dates, and date inflorescences.

Apples and dates are both associated with the goddess Inanna, who is associated with love and fertility. Twisted wire pendants in the same group of objects are not so readily identified. I propose here that the twisted wire pendants in the Puabi assemblage may literally represent rope, symbolically reference sheep, and narratively evoke the flocks of the shepherd Dumuzi. Pairing symbols of Inanna and Dumuzi evokes life in a place of death.

The article, “Symbols of Fertility and Abundance in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, Iraq” was published by the American Journal of Archaeology and it is available online in a PDF format. Click here to download the article.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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