LADY OF THE ANIMALS. The term Lady of the Animals is a scholarly convention used to describe anthropomorphic images of Godesses with companion animals. The image of the Lady of the Animals is well known to readers of the classics: Aphrodite riding a goose or in a chariot drawn by doves, Athena with her owl, and Artemis with her deer. But the image goes back much further than the classical age of Greece (fifth and fourth centuries BCE), even much further back than the times of Homer (before 700 BCE) and Hesiod (c. 700 BCE). Female images with zoomorphic body parts (wings, beaks, snakelike bodies, bear heads, and the like) are common in the Neolithic era in Old Europe (6500–3500 BCE) and elsewhere. Their origins can probably be traced to the Upper Paleolithic (30,000–10,000 BCE). The Lady of the Animals is found in almost all cultures...