Female head from Uruk, a locality in Iraq known in Arabic as Warka', along the east side of the Euphrates, datable at about 3200-3000 B.C. It is probably a representation of the goddess Inanna, whose main cult center was at Uruk. Inanna, who was called Ishtar by the Akkadians and Babylonians, was the most important goddess of the Mesopotamian pantheon. Her figure is very complex and many-sided: she presided over love and sexuality, but also over the fecundity of the earth and over the war. Moreover, the goddess had an astral aspect as representative of the planet Venus, interpreted as both the “Morning Star” and the “Evening Star”. In this aspect she formed a triad with the Moon god, Nanna (Akkadian Sin) and the Sun god, Utu (Akkadian Shamash) (Jacobsen 2005, Pettinato 2005b). This object is in the National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad.

[Image: http://klimtlover.wordpress.com/mesopotamia-and-persia/mesopotamia-and-persia-sumerian-art/