Venus of Willendorf, Museum of Natural History, Vienna, 30,000BC : The Venus of Willendorf was found by the researcher Szombathy on the 7th of August, 1908. It is made out of limestone and still has some signs of red pigmentation; it fits in the palm of a hand. It is one of the most obese representations of the Paleolithic statuary. She represents the Earth and its fertility and continuation of life, the Mother Goddess, the universal female principle even if it is in its most primitive conception. Women were recognized as the life-givers and sustainers. They were revered as priestesses. Upper Paleolithic female figures, such as this one are found from the Pyrenees mountains to Siberia, indicating that East and West were once united in honoring the Goddess. The vast majority (over 90%) of human images from 30,000 to 5,000 B.C. are female.

LOT 701 : 8"H on Marble Base

Dreamer or Malta - National Archeological Museum, Valetta, Malta, 3,000BC : The most spectacular monument in Malta is in the enormous, labyrinthine underground sanctuary known as the Hypogeum which may have been the ceremonial center of the island encompassing more than 6,000 square meters in three levels. This catacomb-like structure seems to have been at once temple, tomb and healing center. The main hall leads into the oracle room where two identical small sculptures of a woman were found lying on the floor where they were probably left when the shrine was abandoned. The dreamer is lying on her side on a low couch, one enormous right forearm underneath her head, the other draped across her heavy breast. She is ample-hipped and topless. Dressed in a full length, bell-shaped skirt she clearly appears to be asleep, almost visibly dreaming. The figures were probably part of a ceremony of dream incubation.

LOT 706 : 9.5"L x 5.5"H

Venus of Laussel - Dordogne, France, 22,000BC : The original is 17 inches tall and was found in the entrance to a cave that was both a dwelling place and a ceremonial site. She was painted red, the color of life, blood, and rebirth. Paleolithic sculptors chiseled her out of limestone with tools of flint, and gave her to hold in her right had a bison’s horn, crescent-shaped like the moon, which is notched with thirteen marks representing the thirteen days of the waxing moon and the thirteen months of the lunar year. With her left hand she points to her swelling womb. Her head is tilted towards the crescent moon, drawing a curve of relationship from her fingers on the womb up through the incline of her head to the crescent horn in her hand, so creating a connection between the waxing phase of the moon and the fecundity of the human womb.

LOT 705 : 10" Wall Hanging

Venus of Lespugue - L'Home Museum, Paris, 25,000BC : The Venus of Lespugue was found in 1922 by Saint Perrier in the cave of Les Rideaux. The sculpture is made out of mammoth ivory and measures 5.75” high. The breasts are deteriorated but they have been restored in this reproduction so that we can appreciate the original look of the statue. She represents the Earth and it’s fertility and the continuation of life, The Mother Goddess, the universal female principle even if it is in its most primitive conception. Upper Paleolithic female figures such as this one are found from the Pyrenees mountains to Siberia, indicating that East and West were once united in honoring the Goddess. The vast majority (over 90%) of human images from 30,000 to 5,000B.C. are female. Women were recognized as the life-givers and sustainers and they were revered as priestesses.

LOT 704 : 8"H on Marble Base

Minoan Snake Goddess - Herakleion Museum, Crete, 1600BC : This figurine represents an agricultural fertility Goddess or her Priestess. The original was found in a storage room in the Palace of Knossos, Crete. She is a votive offering and not a cult figure and therefore, probably represents a Priestess who is perhaps a princess of the palace. Although she is dressed in the garb of her deity, a Cretan Earth Mother, she is a personification of Earth from which all life springs and returns. She carries the snakes, symbols of death and rebirth. Crouching on her crown is a lion cub, usually associated with royal houses. In her crown are poppy pods, indicating the use of opium in her worship.

LOT 752 : 12"H

Ishtar - Louvre Museum, Paris, 2,000BC : So common in the Mesopotamian area were the clay figurines of Ishtar/Inanna/Ashtart in her characteristic breast-offering pose, that this has come to be known among archaeologists as “The Ishtar Pose”. She was addressed as “Mother of the Fruitful Breast”, Queen of Heaven, Light of the World, Creator of People, Mother of Deities, River of Life, Etc. The breast-offering pose suggested her function as the Goddess of all nourishment and fertility. Ishtar, also know as Inanna in Sumeria is, above all, a lunar Goddess who gives life as the waxing moon and then withdraws it as the waning moon. The light and dark dimensions to her power, her dying and resurrected son-lover Tammaz, who annually descends to the underworld and rises again from it all suggests a lunar mythology which revolves around the connection made between the light and dark lunar phases and rhythmic alteration of the Earth’s fertility.

LOT 703 : 11.5" H on Marble Base

Nile River Goddess - Brooklyn Museum or Art, New York , 4,000BC : The image of the bird Goddess appeared in Egypt in early pre-dynastic times (4000B.C.) as funerary figures with strongly beaked faces and winglike arms and hands. These painted terracotta figures, less than a foot high and much alike, were found in graves in Mohamerian, near Edfu. They serve as a superb blend of bird, woman, and deity. Their greatly enlarged posteriors are a representation of the cosmic or primal egg. In Egyptian myth, the generation of the primal egg takes place in what is know as the time of non-being where the sublime goose appears among the imperishable stars. While the world is still flooded by silence, the voice of the great cackler breaks the stillness, and she lays the egg containing the germ of life. From her egg bursts forth a bird of celestial light. The cosmic matter from which the universe is formed comes from the primal egg.

LOT 702 : 11"H on Marble Base