Images of woman and child from the Bronze Age : reconsidering fertility, maternity, and gender in the ancient world / Stephanie Lynn Budin.

"This book is a study of the woman-and-child motif as it appeared in the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, focusing on Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Cyprus, and the Aegean. Rather than being a universal symbol of maternity, or a depiction of a mother goddess, the woman-and-child motif, called by the technical name kourotrophos, was relatively rare in comparison wtih other images of women in antiquity, and served a number of different symbolic functions, ranging from honoring the king of Egypt to giving extra oomph to magical spells"-- Provided by publisher.