SEMIRAMIS: Legendary Mysterious Great Queen of Assyria, Edited By

SEMIRAMIS Legendary Mysterious Great Queen of Assyria A commentary edited by George E. Foryan In ancient days when legend and myth were placed at the border of reality often signifying an intangible truth, there is one story that stands alone hidden deep in the archives of historical obscurity. It is seldom present in the popular literature of the great epics of old like the Odyssey, Hercules, Helen of Troy and so forth; nor has it ever received considerable recognition as one of the great classics locked into the confines of an in-dept study for future literary expeditions. Yet beneath it's structure lies a mystery, or perhaps, more of an aberrant narrative that intertwines with so many other epics of it's time that one would become confused as to interpret who this person really is. This article is written to shed a light on the saga of the mysterious, but fascinating queen Semiramis, the ancient effigy of the Assyrian empire. Famed for her beauty, strength, wisdom, voluptuousness, and alluring power, she is said to have built Babylon with its hanging gardens, erect many other cities, conquer Egypt and much of Asia including Ethiopia, execute war against the Medes and Chaldeans; which eventually lead to an unsuccessful attack on India where she nearly lost her life. As G.J. Whyfe-Melville states in his novel of Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen, "She was beautiful no doubt, in the nameless beauty that wins, no less than in the lofty beauty that compels. Her form was matchless in symmetry, so that her every gesture, in the saddle or on the throne, was womanly, dignified, and graceful, while each dress she wore, from royal robe and jeweled tiara to steel breast-plate and golden headpiece, seemed that in which she looked her best. With a man's strength of body, she possessed more than a man's power of mind and force of will. A shrewd observer would have detected in those bright eyes, despite their thick lashes and loving glance, the genius that can command an army and found an empire; in that delicate, exquisitely chiseled face, the lines that tell of tameless pride and unbending resolution; in the full curves of that rosy mouth, in the clean-cut jaw and prominence of the beautifully molded chin, a cold recklessness that could harden on occasion to pitiless cruelty - stern, impracticable, immovable as fate.†" She built such an inuring reputation that queen Margaret of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (1353-1412 A.D.) And Catherine II the Great of Russia (1729-1796) were both labeled as the Semiramis of the North. The only complete significant documentation that I found intact about Semiramis is recorded in the historical writings of Diodorus Siculus (Library of History), a Greek historian about the same time as Julius Caesar. Although he is listed in the category of an elute expert on ancient history, many scholars have come to the conclusion that much of his writings, especially those of the narratives of Semiramis, are plagiarized and based on historical legends colored with elaborations of thought and disguised fantasies, and therefore cannot be recognized as existential tangible truth or fact. As the story unfolds, it begins with king Ninus (Greek: tentatively Ramman-Nirari) of Assyria, who builds a great city in honor of his name, and the city becomes Nineveh (Roman: Ninus) the capital of the Assyrian empire. He was a great warrior who subdued the greater parts of Asia, becoming the first great king, and conqueror of the ancient world of his time, and as Diodorus writes...there were none other before him...that of which he knew of. If this be true then some scholars would place him approximately about 2182 B.C., which would be in proximity to Nimrod of the Bible, ruler of the land of Shinar as outlined in Gen.10:10-11. The etymology of Nimrod is quite uncertain and the Bible does not go into further detail about him apart from these few lines written in Genesis, except that he was the founder of Nineveh along with a number of other well known ancient cities. The Hebrew historian Flavius Josephus, in the Antiquities of the Jews, depicts Nimrod as a tyrannical leader, demanding complete dominion and control over the people. As Josephus writes: "He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He gradually changed the government into tyranny - seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his power." He likely rose to power by being a mighty protector over the land with his fearless gift of hunting and killing predatory wild animals that were a threat to human civilization, therefore receiving the title "mighty hunter before the Lord (Gen. 10:9). In post-biblical traditions, Nimrod, the inciter of "rebellion" who ruled Babel, was often identified as a giant, or Nephilim (Gen. 6:4), equivalent to the Anakim of Dueteronomy (Duet. 2:21-20;9:2). He was the chief instigator of the tower of Babel. This was a revolt which led to building a tower in the course of staging revenge against God, lest He flood the world again. The tower was a symbol of worship and protection and became well known by many as the ziggurat of Etemenanki, in honor of the Babylonian supreme god Marduk; a dominant central point of worship that spread out to many other nations that were to come (thirty-four of these staged towers have now been located in twenty-seven ancient cities of the Middle East - the greatest of them all was the one at Babylon). If the name is originally Hebrew, which is highly improbable, then it would mean, "to rebel", and linked to the Akkadian Amarutuk he eventually evolved into the god "Marduk", which would then lead into the realm of ruler-worship. However, it is probably Mesopotamian in origin and most frequently suggested as equivalent to the word Ninurta, though this is not without philological difficulty or opposition. Ninurta, read apparently Nimurta in dialectic Sumerian, is presumably a polemic distortion of the origin of the name Nimrod, the famous hunter of Hebrew mythology, which is incorporated in one of the oldest Hebrew documents. If the form Ninurta is accepted, and assumed, it would refer strictly to a mythic god, and point to the Babylonian deity, the war-god called "the Arrow, the mighty hero" whose cult assumed widespread importance in Mesopotamia during the late second millennium B.C. Nimrod would then border on the total concept of mythology. If it refers to a historical person, the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (1246-1206 B.C.) could be an accurate choice, since he was the first Assyrian monarch to rule over Babylonia and have cultic centers in Babel, Caleh, and others known cities of this time. According to Speiser (1924-1946), a leading authority on biblical lands, cultures and excavations of important Sumerian rites in Iraq, he notably felt Tukulti-Ninurta I served as a prototype for the composite Greek hero Ninus, associated with Nineveh, who became the character united with Semiramis of Diodorus Siculus' Antiquities of Asia; however, G.J. Whyfe-Melville in his book, Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen, makes note that Ninus is an ancestral linage of thirteen generation down from the historical Nimrod. There also followed an interval of subjugation to the Semitic-speaking Akkadians (2300-2150 B.C.), so named after the city of Akkad whose greatest rulers, Sargon and especially his grandson Naram- Sin, may have conceivably provided the model for Nimrod and Ashur in the Genesis story. However, if the Cushite origin of Nimrod listed from Genesis is maintained, the Egyptian monarch Amenophis III (1411-1375) would be suitable according to von Rad. In the history of Sumerian literature he could also be ranked as Etana, king of Kish (2800 B.C.) the "man who stabilized all the land" who also was resin to deity, or the hero Gilgamish from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamish. Regardless of origin, Nimrod must have become a figure of legendary proportions in the ancient Near East culture whose stories were extremely fluid. He was adopted by, and adapted to so many titles, that many phases of ancient cultures lived on even into medieval chronicles. He left such an influence that the prophet Micah calls Assyria the "land of Nimrod" (Mic. 5:6). The main draw back to this prodigy as the conquering hero of Assyria associated with Semiramis and the surrounding regions is the lack of notoriety given to a queen, or spouse who would assist her ruling husband 1 during these early conquests; for it is noted that all the conquering heroes of this ancient era were predominantly male-origin only. In fact, the dominant rule applying to leadership is, "No woman may reign over the sons of Ashur, we only owe allegiance to a king. It is our privilege and our law.††" There is definitely no mention of Semiramis in any Hebrew documents, or Biblical texts. It must stand to reason that the placement of Semiramis must surely come at a much later date...a time that would be more familiar to Diodorus since his lack of Assyrian history is possibly to obscure for him to have full knowledge of all the facts...And it must be understood that nearly all the ancient accounts of Assyria and the surrounding area do not refer to the earlier primitive cities and it's culture, but to the later capital and residence of King Nebuchadnezzar.

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