The 1936 "London Illustrated News" feature had "no doubt of the authenticity" of the object which had "been subjected to exhaustive chemical examination" and showed traces of bitumen "dried out in a way which is only possible in the course of many centuries". But stylistic doubts were published only a few months later by D. Opitz who noted the "absolutely unique" nature of the owls with no comparables in all of Babylonian figurative artefacts. In a back-to-back article, E. Douglas Van Buren examined examples of Sumerian art, which had been excavated and provenanced and she presented examples: Ishtar with two lions, the Louvre plaque (AO 6501) of a nude, bird-footed goddess standing on two Ibexes and similar plaques, and even a small haematite owl, although the owl is an isolated piece and not in an iconographical context.