Although it has often been assumed that the women of the kings’ palaces lived cloistered, cut off from public interaction, architectural remains do not support such a conjecture (Westenholtz 1990: 513-16), nor, with the possible exception of the Middle Assyrian period, is there evidence that women were required to be veiled in public (Stol 1995: 124). It is important, therefore, that we should not confuse the women of the Ancient Near East with the exotic harem courtesans evoked in modern romance. Numerous women of varying status lived and worked in the palace; the mother of the king or the king’s primary wife was usually of the highest rank. It is not always possible to determine how many women were attached to a palace, but texts such as ration lists indicate that the female population could be substantial. For instance, at Ebla toward the end of the third millennium, distribution records show that the number of royal wives increased from twenty or thirty to fifty over a short period (Archi 2002: 3). A thousand years later in Assyria, wine lists suggest that perhaps as many as three hundred women of different ranks lived at the palace (Kinnier-Wilson 1972: 44). Of the many women associated with the palace, only the most elite - the queen mother, royal spouse, king’s daughters and occasionally sisters - have left much evidence of their active involvement in affairs of state; hence it is to these women that we limit our investigation.
There is almost no information concerning the education royal women received, although the accomplishments evinced by some of them prove that they were capable of creative self-expression. Enheduanna, the daughter ofSargon, founder ofthe Empire of Akkad around 2334 bce, is the world’s earliest identified author. She was responsible for composing a cycle of hymns dedicated to the goddess Inanna (Hallo and Van Dijk 1968). Some of the royal women of the Ur III period (2112-2004 bce) have been credited with authoring poems such as a lament for the death of the king Ur-nammu, a lullaby for a crown prince, and a love lyric for the king Su-Sin (Hallo 1978: 32). It is unknown whether any of these women could actually write, but in light of the fact that only two kings in Mesopotamian history claimed that ability, Sulgi and Assurbanipal, it seems likely that the women relied on scribes to record their compositions.
The fact that women received particular titles indicates that rank was as important for women as it was for men. In most cases, women’s titles can be consistently translated as in queen mother or king’s daughter, but the title designating the king’s spouse varied a great deal and did not always mean queen. For this reason, we use the neutral term wife except in specific cases where queen is appropriate.
Royal women were rarely depicted on public monuments or mentioned in inscriptions, but when occasionally they did appear, they were subordinate only to the king or divinities. Thus, Enheduanna appeared on a sculptured disc worshiping Inanna (Winter 1987; Bahrani 2001: 113-17), and on a bronze relief, Naqia, the mother of Esarhaddon (680-669 bce), was portrayed in a ritual pose behind her son (Melville 1999: 25-6; Ornan 2002: 461-77).
Grave goods also attest to the fact that the king’s primary wife and mother were particularly revered. The Early Dynastic III graves at Ur in the late third millennium contained a seal bearing the inscription of Puabi, the queen. The rich finds associated with the grave and the practice of retainer burial - killing and burying subjects with the ruler and his wife - reveal that Puabi’s status was comparable to that of the king (Pollock 1991: 372-9). The high regard accorded royal burials is evident throughout Mesopotamian history. Recent excavation of the tombs of two Neo-Assyrian consorts at Nimrud produced extraordinary examples of gold jewelry, crowns, and personal objects (Harak 1990; George 1990).
Men could gain status through their relationships with elite women, but at the same time, a man’s honor was intimately tied to ‘‘his’’ women. At Ebla in the midthird millennium the brothers of the queen mother received goods and rank as a direct result of their relationship to her (Archi 2002: 6). Sometimes men became legitimate rulers only through marriage into the royal family, and certainly a king’s virile image was enhanced by having more women, and therefore more children, in his household. If, on the other hand, a man lost control of the women of his household, he lost status. The capture of royal families became a topos in Assyrian royal inscriptions, symbolizing the utter defeat and humiliation of the enemy. For instance, when Tiglath-pileser I (1114-1076 bce) defeated Kili-Teshub, the king of Kutmuhi on the upper Tigris River, and took ‘‘his wives, his sons, the offspring of his loins, (and) his household’’ (Luckenbill 1926: 75), he not only dealt a terrible blow to the enemy tribe; he cuckolded its leader. By taking over the household of an enemy, a king assumed all the power and authority that had belonged to his adversary. This gesture was widely recognized in the Ancient Near East and appears in the Bible (2 Samuel 12: 11, 16: 21-2) and accounts of Alexander the Great (Brown 1981: 2; Hoff 2002: 243). Royal women were highly regarded and symbolically important, but their official roles are much more difficult to determine. They varied according to whether the context was administrative, political, or religious.
World History
