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“Queens of the Arabs”? Trade or Gender – Which Was More Influential in Relations between the Royalty of the Neo-Assyrians and the “Queens of the Arabs”? Total word count: 19, 506 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract The “Queens of the Arabs” are women who have the title “Queen of the Arabs” in Neo-Assyrian sources. These women only feature in Assyrian sources, as we have very little textual evidence from the Arabian peninsula during the Neo-Assyrian period. This thesis will first ask why the Assyrians were interested in controlling Arabia at all by investigating the importance of the region in terms of trade. Many valuable goods were traded through the Arabian peninsula, such as frankincense and myrrh. These were carried by another valuable resource – camels. This thesis will investigate whether the importance of the trade routes is enough of an explanation for the portrayal of the “Queens of the Arabs” in the Assyrian sources. The second half of this thesis will ask whether their gender was more important than trade in their portrayals by the Assyrians. Here we have the problem of modern racist and sexist views clouding the views of scholars writing about these women. These have to be identified, and we must be able to look past these. What also becomes evident is that the Assyrians themselves had misunderstandings about the “Queens of the Arabs” and the way their societies were structured. With this in mind, this thesis will use the royal women of the Assyrian courts as a comparison in order to understand what the Assyrians expected from women associated with power. What we find is that there are very few visible royal Assyrian women in the texts and reliefs. To counter this problem, we will look at the visible exceptions. Women like Zakutu and Sammu-ramat are seen as unusual, and we can use this to determine how Assyrian women were meant to behave. In turn, we can see what the Assyrians expected to encounter with the “Queens of the Arabs”. These women appear to be the opposite to what the Assyrians would have seen in their royal women. They were actively engaged in battle, they could engage in diplomacy and trade on behalf of their people, and (perhaps most telling) their titles are not based on their relationships with powerful men. This difference in expectations clearly had an impact on the Assyrians, and this thesis will investigate this. 2 Contents Contents of Figures ...............................................................................................................................4 1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................................5 2. Trade.................................................................................................................................................11 3. Gender..............................................................................................................................................29 4. Conclusion........................................................................................................................................54 5. List of Abbreviations........................................................................................................................57 6. Bibliography.....................................................................................................................................58 3 Contents of Figures Figure 1. “Map of Arabia and the main trade routes in Arabia.”...........................................................7 Figure 2. “Two Arab soldiers fleeing from Assyrian troops.”................................................................16 Figure 3. “Two camels in Ashurbanipal’s military camp.”....................................................................17 Figure 4. “Some of the bronze objects from Oman.”...........................................................................20 Figure 5. “A pedestal/altar with Egyptian-style bull.”..........................................................................22 Figure 6. “Bronze plaque depicting Esarhaddon and Zakutu.”.............................................................30 Figure 7. “A (possibly) female figure riding a camel on a raised seating fleeing from battle with the Assyrian forces.”...................................................................................................................................45 Figure 8. “An Arab tent burning in an Assyrian raid with two dead figures – a male on the right, and a female on the left.”...............................................................................................................................46 4 1. Introduction The Assyrian empire during the Sargonid period had many contacts outside of the empire. One of these, and arguably one of the richest, was Arabia. This was not the modern-day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but a much larger area encompassing the whole Arabian peninsula, as well as the Syrian desert between the Levant and Mesopotamia (as seen in Figure 1). One of the most interesting features of this area involved the activities of “Queens of the Arabs” who seem to have exacted absolute rule in the first millennium (all dates, unless stated otherwise, will be in BC). What we know of these women is limited, but what we can see is that they were in contact (whether it be in trade or war) with the Assyrians. Since trade played a large part in the history of Arabia, we have to investigate the role this played in the relationship between the “Queens of the Arabs” and the Assyrian empire. We shall look at Zabibe’s tribute to Tiglath-pileser III to establish what the Assyrians found valuable in Arabia, and we shall assess the relative wealth of these queens by looking at Samsi and Te’elḫunu and what was taken from them in booty. However, trade cannot be the only factor in the interaction between the Arabs and the Assyrian kings. Since Arabs were occasionally ruled by queens, and the norm in Assyria was rule by a king, gender must have played a role at some level with these female rulers. There is little written about these queens, so we need to use what little we have, and compare it to the sources on contemporary Assyrian royal women.1 This will inform us to some level on how the “Queens of the Arabs” were both treated and portrayed by the Assyrian kings. We shall start with Arabian queens like Adiya and Iati’e, who act most like the Assyrian royal women by being passive actors in the historical record, and we shall compare them to arguably the most well-known Assyrian royal woman – Zakutu. She will act as an introduction as to what was expected of royal women in Assyria, largely because she is the most visible Neo-Assyrian woman in the historical record. Through Zakutu’s behaviour we can see how she acts both in accordance with tradition, and how she goes against it, thus demonstrating to us what was unexpected of a royal woman. After this we will ask whether the title “Queen of the Arabs” was an appropriate title the Arabs gave to the women who had power, or if this was a title bestowed upon them by the Assyrians. For this, Iapa and Baslu will be used, and the nature of their power will be contrasted with the implicit power the royal Assyrian women held in the royal harem. The extraordinary nature of power the Arabians held shall also be explored through Samsi and Te’elḫunu. 1 This comparative approach is one I find most appropriate for this thesis. For an anthropological approach (one that is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper) to “forgotten” women in the Middle East, see Mernissi 1993. 5 These two women are recorded as being in control of a military force, and we shall very briefly ask if this kind of power in women’s hands changed the way they were treated by the Assyrians. We shall compare with Sammu-ramat, the only Assyrian royal woman who is vaguely connected to violence or battles. Finally, we shall turn to Tabua, and see how the expectations that come with gender in Assyria can alter how a woman could rule. Manipulation of her gender norms in Assyria was done in the hope she would become sympathetic to Assyria whilst she ruled Arabia. Hopefully these comparisons and analyses will answer some of the many questions we have about these women, but there are also many other questions whose answers lie beyond the scope of this thesis. Figure 1: Map of Arabia and the main trade routes in Arabia. Macdonald 1995: 1356. As we shall be looking at the role gender played in history, we have to be clear about the strategy taken to analyse our sources. Bahrani has described how gender studies in ancient history has gone 6 through several “waves” of theory. Whilst these divisions are based on the trajectory gender studies has taken in Classics, I would argue that in studying the ancient Near East, we can learn from these theories and take the best aspects into Assyriology and adapt them to the discipline. The first of these
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