Dr. Steve Tinney, Associate Curator, Babylonian Section, Penn Museum The Penn Museum’s popular monthly evening lecture series kicks off with a fresh theme: Great Beasts of Legends. Throughout history, great beasts and monsters fabled or not have terrorized, enchanted, and eluded humans. Join leading Penn scholars on an exploration of some of the best stories from the around the world, and meet some memorable beasts, including Centaurs, Hobbits, and Sphinxes. Dr. Steve Tinney, Associate Curator, Babylonian Section, starts off the series with an in-depth look at Anzu, one of ancient Mesopotamia’s iconic monsters, a giant eagle with a lion’s head, depicted in art from as early as 2500 BCE. As a symbol of the gods and friend of heroes, Anzu's early career seems benign, but somewhere along the way his ambition gets the better of him. Dr. Tinney follows Anzu from artistic masterpiece to cosmic threat to his eventual ignominious demise by a fatal twist..

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