 Although art historians tend to spend a lot of time on the early civilizations of the ancient Near East, they don't tend to spend quite as much time talking about the civilizations that were roughly contemporary with the Romans. For example, the Parthians, who were a great empire, roughly comprising modern-day Iran and Iraq, between about 247 BCE and 224 CE, they were a formidable opponent for the Romans, and the Romans lost a number of key battles to them. What we're seeing here and what we're going to talk about in this case study are a couple of different types of representations for a Parthian goddess, and the goddess that we're looking at could be identified either as Ishtar, the goddess of love, beauty, and war. There's a long tradition of her worship in ancient Mesopotamia that carried on into the Parthian Empire, or the goddess Nanaya, who is slightly less known. She was the daughter of Nyn, the god of the moon, and was sort of treated by the Romans as the equivalent to Diana, the huntress goddess of the moon. In a number of collections, we have these wonderful reclining figures made of alabaster. Many of them are nude, most of them are not clothed, or if they have clothing on them, it only sort of barely drapes their body, like the example above. And they're usually reclining on one side and have one arm outstretched. Normally, they also have some sort of inlay for their eyes, oftentimes as we'll see precious stone. And they come in two different forms, this reclining form and also a standing form that we'll see later. But what I want you to think about is how alabaster, and particularly the type of alabaster that they're using, is perhaps a really good choice for the representation of a female form. I think on these two examples, you can also tell that these figures would originally have been painted. It looks like all of the draperies certainly would have had paint on it. And you can see portions of paint on both figures, some along the side of the torso of the upper figure and also on her drapery. And then really primarily along the hemline of the figure that still has her head on the bottom. Here's a fully nude figure of one of those goddesses, and you can see that she has what appears to be a crescent moon sort of decoration in her hair. And that's part of the reason that she has been associated with Nanaia, the daughter of the moon god, as sort of a Diana figure. But you can also see from her sort of curvaceous and somewhat seductive position why she could also be interpreted as Ishtar, the goddess of love and beauty and war and human sexuality. I also want you to notice, particularly in this figure, the effect of that alabaster. I think you can see here that the warmth and that sort of inner glow that alabaster seems to get when it's struck with light really seems to make this figure kind of have a almost erotic quality to her. It accentuates her fleshy qualities and makes her seem to be made not of a hard stone but rather of a softer substance like human flesh. And so here we have alabaster being used for sort of a sensuous quality. In addition to those reclining figures of either Ishtar or Nanaia, we also have examples that were made in a standing position and made with arms that were jointed close to the elbow. And when the joining apparatus has been found, it has been gold wire. So imagine gold wire attaching the arms to the figure on the far left who is now missing both of her lower arms. And then you're seeing two views of the same figure at the center and right. All three of these figures again are made of alabaster. You can see that the figure at the center and right has experienced some damage probably from moisture over time. Most of these figures have been found in the graves of women and so it's possible that these would have been offerings from perhaps the husband, the widower who is honoring his wife and comparing her to a goddess. The goddess was meant also to have some sort of protective function over the dead woman. There's also some indication on these from traces of paint and other types of pigment that perhaps the nipples would have been colored and also the pubic area. And you can see some damage and also what appears to be perhaps some traces of color on both of these figures. Now we're looking at the most famous of all of these figures, these alabaster goddesses. This is an example that is in the Louvre Museum today and like the other standing figures I brought in, she was found with gold wires joining her upper arms to her lower arms. And you might notice that all of these figures that have an extant arm, one of those arms is outstretched as if burying something and there are suggestions as to what that might have been, maybe a cornucopia or something else, some sort of fertility symbol. It's not really clear. What's remarkable about this figure is that she survives with all of her decoration intact. Her hair was made out of stucco, so kind of like a plaster substance. She has a gilded crescent moon decorating the top of her hairdo. She has rubies set in her navel and also into her eyes. Her eyes have bitumen, that's kind of a tarry substance that is petroleum based. That's what you use to stick the rubies into her eyes. And then of course she has gold earrings and a gold necklace. Also she is beautifully adored, you might notice also that there's a lot of attention being given to her hips and to her pubic area. She's really a highly erotic figure. I think it's kind of funny too that all of these figures have those kind of unnaturally tiny feet that we associate with vintage Barbie dolls. I want to finish with this view of the alabaster goddess from the Louvre. I think to me this is probably meant to represent Ishtar. But what I want you to notice is the effect of light on the pure white alabaster of this figure. She seems to glow from within. That is one of the qualities of alabaster that I think is really being exploited by the artists who made these figures. Something about that glowing nature makes her seem somehow both more erotic and sensual and also more like a goddess. I would imagine that if you saw a goddess disrobe she might glow from within. And unfortunately when you go to the Louvre this figure doesn't tend to be lit very well but the photos I'm showing you here are from a show that I went to at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that featured a number of these figures. And she's spotlit perfectly to take advantage of the effect of the light on the alabaster. And you can just see how beautifully that shows off this figure in all of her glory.