Asteroid 1181 Lilith, like 55 Pandora and the Big Four asteroids, is a main-belt asteroid and is not to be confused with the hypothetical planet also known as the Dark Moon or with the energy point also known as the Black Moon or the lunar apogee. 1181 Lilith was discovered in the early 20th century at about the same time as Pluto, on February 11, 1927 at Algiers, Algeria by Benjamin Jekhovsky. He named the asteroid for French musical prodigy and composer Marie-Juliette Olga "Lili" Boulanger(1893-1918), younger sister of the longer-lived and more productive and influential composer, music instructor and orchestra conductor Nadia Boulanger. Lili Boulanger, whose father was in his seventies when she was born, dazzled the European music world around the turn of the 20th century, was in poor health throughout her life and died of the intestinal disorder Crohn's disease at the age of 24.
Some of the archetype of the asteroid Lilith seems to come from Lili Boulanger's life story, and some possibly from the fact that it was discovered on the African continent.
Some of asteroid Lilith's archetype, too, comes from the mythological figure from which Lili Boulanger's nickname was derived, Lilith, the first wife of Adam in Hebrew mythology, made from clay by Jehovah like Adam, who was rejected by him for daring to assert equality with him and left him, choosing loneliness as the price of independence. Jehovah made from Adam's rib the more pliable Eve and Lilith was then literally demonized, becoming identified with the ancient Iraqis' Lilitu, "the maid of desolation," a female temptress dwelling in waste places and abandoned buildings, menacing travelers on lonely roads and pregnant women and seducing and ruining men. Lilitu means"whirlwind" in the Cuneiform tongue of old Mesopotamia. In Hebrew, the name Lilith means "evil woman" or "night".