Tracing Lilith Back in Art & Text

We can trace Lilith's development through both art and text; through mythological as well as talmudic, pseudepigraphic and apocryphal sources. 

They include: the 3rd millenium story of Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree; a 2400 BCE text referring to a Sumerian storm demon; the famous terracotta relief of Lilith known as the Burley plaque from circa 2300 BCE; in Babylonian legends dating from roughly 1800 BC; in Aramaic incantation texts found in bowls around 600 CE in Nippur, Babylonia (Iraq), Arslan Tash (Syria) and Persia (Iran); in Rabbinic literature, midrashim and folklore from the 5th to the 12th Centuries CE, in 15th and 16th Century European sculpture and woodcuts, in Kabbalistic sources beginning in the 12th and appearing through the 17th Century CE, in literature carrying her through to the present day. The only actual Biblical reference to Lilith or ‘the liliths’ is in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 34:14); whether or not it truly represents this mysterious figure is a matter of conjecture.

I find Lilith, as both symbol and mythological figure, endlessly fascinating. When I first learned of her I was in corporate life; when I returned to school to pursue an MA degree, she rapidly became the focus of my thesis: "Lilith as Everywoman in Ancient Text & Modern Midrash: Transforming a Demonized Eros". Whichever legends about her one chooses to believe, for me she symbolizes both the best and the worst in women (and men), and shows us the desirable, mysterious, pro/creative, regenerative and healing powers of the dark or unknown as well as the socially unacceptable or amoral attributes of ‘the dark’.

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