Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay, nude female form seated between feline-headed arm-rests. It is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother goddess in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (lioness, leopard, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is similar to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf.

It is a neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed in approximately 6000 BC. It was unearthed by archaeologist James Mellaart in 1961 at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. When it was found, its head and hand rest of the right side were missing. The current head and the hand rest are modern replacements. The sculpture is at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey. Mellaart claimed that the figure represented a fertility goddess worshipped by the people of Çatalhöyük.