Any discussion of the religious iconography of ancient Mesopotamia is hampered by the fact that we have, on the one hand, religious texts for which we possess no visual counterparts and, on the other, representations—sometimes extremely elaborate ones—for which we lack all written documentation. Mesopotamia lacked raw materials such as stone, metal, and wood, and these had to be imported. As a result stone was often recut and metal was melted down; nor has wood survived. In time of war, temple treasures were carried off as booty, and divine statues were mutilated or taken into captivity, so that virtually none remains. Indeed we should know very little of Mesopotamian sculpture of the third and second millennia BCE were it not for the objects looted by the Elamites in the late second millennium BCE and found by the French in their excavations at Susa in...