DEMON, MOTHER, MAKER OF KINGS

FREE DISPLAY

Open from 21 Jun 2024 to 15 Jun 2025

Ancient Middle East Gallery

Guest Curated by Professor Maria Misra, Keble College

In ancient and medieval societies, gods and goddesses were central to how people saw the world.

In this display you will discover a group of female divinities of the ancient world offering a glimpse into the many surprising forms of their power, from motherhood, love and fertility, to being fiercely violent and asserting political authority. Each has many different roles and functions in war, battle and death, politics, intelligence, and even navigation.

Many scholars in the late Victorian period saw these goddesses as evidence of an ancient ‘Great Goddess’ cult, which they mistakenly interpreted as evidence of matriarchy – a society led by women. These ideas, though useful to feminists, were used by their critics to argue that female power was ‘primitive’ and ‘uncivilised’.

Header image:  Durga slays the buffalo demon Mahishasuramardini, illustration (detail), 17th century, gouache on paper
 

SOME OF THE OBJECTS ON DISPLAY

Terracotta figurine of a goddess from Cyprus made around 1200 BCE

Terracotta bird-headed statuette of Astarte or Cypriot Aphrodite nursing a child, around 1550–1200 BCE. Cyprus. AN1953.244

Bronze figure of Durga Mahishasuramardini, an Indian warrior goddess

Bronze figure of Durga Mahishasuramardini, 1800s, South India. EA1958.164

Statuette of Aphrodite, 43–410 CE Gloucestershire in Roman Britain Terracotta. AN1949.182

Statuette of Aphrodite, 43–410 CE, Gloucestershire in Roman Britain Terracotta. AN1949.182

 
Cylinder seal depicting Ishtar, 1900–1600 BCE Old Babylonian, Iraq

Cylinder seal depicting Ishtar, 1900–1600 BCE Old Babylonian, Iraq

Roman coin showing a standing goddess in the centre

Imperial silver coin of Julia Domna, 211–217 CE. HCR5823

Red sandstone relief plaque with three figures

Sandstone plaque with Panchika and Hariti and child, 2–3 CE, Northern India. EAOS.32

Aphrodite astride horses

Aphrodite driving Poseidon in a Chariot, print of the decoration on a Greek amphora, 1853

 

PLAN YOUR VISIT

 

Gender and the Myth of Matriarchy

The display is part of a collaboration between the University of Oxford History Faculty and the Ashmolean Museum. It is based on research exploring changing ideas of gender globally since pre-history to the present and has been guest curated by Professor Maria Misra, Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Keble College, who is researching a Global History of Gender.

A conference, Global Gender: Pasts, Presents, Futures, is taking place 24–26 June 2024 in Oxford. Information about the programme, and registration, can be found on the Oxford University TORCH Global Gender website