Although royal women could be important in civil administration, in the political arena their roles tended to be symbolic rather than active. A strong royal wife might be her spouse’s true partner; the king’s mother might help him gain the throne, and his daughters could, when married to vassals or other kings, be important political tools. These women never acted on their own behalf, but always as representatives of men. Thus, the role of the king’s wife in diplomacy tended to be gender specific; she dealt primarily with other women as in the case of an Early Dynastic consort, Baranamtara of Lagash, who exchanged gifts with Ninizkimti, the wife of the ruler of Adab before 2400 bce (Hallo 1978: 28). Such exchanges demonstrated to both sides that the rulers were the heads of proper families of equal status who knew and followed the rules of diplomacy.
Toward the end of the second millennium, the Hittite queen Pudu-hepa corresponded with both the Egyptian pharaoh, Ramesses II, and his wife, Nefertari, but this correspondence was restricted to perfunctory formal greetings and some negotiation about the marriage of a Hittite princess to the Egyptian king (Otten 1975: 26). Undoubtedly Pudu-hepa’s letters were meant to show that the Hittite royal couple were equal to the Egyptian ruler and his wife, but they also reflected a practice peculiar to the Hittites, that the queen, rather than the king, chose which royal daughter would marry.
The mothers of kings could sometimes enter the political fray, though they always did so on behalf of their sons. Some of the most powerful women in Mesopotamian history acquired their authority by helping their sons gain or keep the throne (Ben-Barak 1987: 34-40). The Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus (555-539 bce), who was not of royal birth, was introduced at court by his mother, Adad-guppi, who was instrumental in his rise to power and later provided him with a convenient rationale for claiming legitimacy; her pious deeds brought him to the attention of the gods, who then put him on the throne (Beaulieu 1989: 78-9). Adad-guppi lived to the ripe old age of a hundred and four and was a great help to her son, symbolically if not actually.
The Neo-Assyrian queen mothers, Shammu-ramat (Semiramis of legend) and Naqia, both played important roles during their sons’ reigns. Naqia corresponded with officials in cities throughout the empire, made donations to temples, built a palace, and administered her estates. Naqia was a prominent and respected figure at court, but there is no evidence that she actually took part in politics except on one occasion when, after her son’s sudden death, she fulfilled his wishes and imposed a loyalty oath on the Assyrian populace on behalf of her grandson, the new king, Assurbanipal (668-627 bce) (Melville 1999: 79-90). These women were undoubtedly exceptional, but they did not directly wield political power. They always acted on behalf of their sons or grandsons for the benefit of their families and dynasties.
There were three basic types of political marriage in the Ancient Near East: dynastic marriage, diplomatic marriage between equal states, and marriage to tie a vassal to the lord. Around 2150 bce it was the custom at Lagash for the ruler to gain the throne by marrying a daughter of the previous ruler or, if there was none, a daughter of the ruling family. In this way Gudea became ruler of Lagash by marrying Ninalla, the daughter of Urbaba (Rollig 1974: 12-13). Marriage continued to be used as one of the chief ways for a man to legitimize his claim to the throne. By marrying Shibtu, the daughter of the ruler of the powerful state of Yamhad, Zimri-Lim acquired sufficient military backing to reclaim the throne of Mari and implement his lifelong but ultimately unsuccessful effort to extend his territories. The complex political marriages of the Neo-Babylonian period (626-539 bce) offer another example of this type of union: Neriglissar, the son of an official, married into the royal family and then murdered his brother-in-law, the king Amel-Marduk. Neriglissar then claimed the throne on the strength of his link to the dynasty through Amel-Marduk’s sister (Weisberg 1974: 448).
During the Sargonic period (2334-2193 bce) one of the daughters of the king of Marhashi in northwest Iran joined the royal family of Akkad by marrying either the king or his son. Less than a century later, Ur-Nammu, the first king of the Ur III dynasty (2112-2004 bce), arranged a marriage between his son and the daughter of the king of Mari, thus establishing a friendly relationship between the two city-states. Sometimes marriage alliances failed to achieve the desired political objective, however. In his thirty-first year, Siulgi, the third king of the Ur III dynasty, married his daughter to the king of Anshan on the Iranian plateau. The marriage was a diplomatic failure, for Siulgi destroyed Anshan shortly afterwards. The daughter of Su-Sin was married to the king of Shimanum in the mountains north of Iraq, but the couple was subsequently deposed, and Su-Sin had to go to war to restore them to power (Hallo 1978: 31).
Not only did the Mari king Zimri-Lim use his daughters to set up alliances and secure vassals, but once they were installed in their new homes, these women gathered intelligence for their father and many of their letters contained reports on the political maneuvers of their husbands (Lafont 1987). When the marriage and the alliance were successful, the daughters led rewarding lives, but if the political circumstances deteriorated or the marriage itself failed, then the situation of the daughter could become intolerable, prompting her to write to her father begging him to call her home. Zimri-Lim was sensitive to the plight of his daughters. Once Zimri-Lim responded to an urgent request to return to Mari by telling his daughter to ‘‘Go ahead and gather your household. If that is not possible, (just) cover your head and depart’’ (Sasson 1973: 65). However uncertain their situations sometimes were, the daughters of Zimri-Lim actively and enthusiastically corresponded with their father, whom they expected seriously to consider their reports and counsel. In one case, a princess even went so far as to remind her father of the negative consequences of not heeding her advice (Sasson 1973: 68). Because Zimri-Lim and his daughters operated in a limited geographical area among a homogeneous ethnic group, the royal women of Mari were able to take part in political exchanges to an unprecedented degree. When the political stage grew to include a wide area and many different cultures, however, the significance of diplomatic marriage changed and with it the role of the women involved.
During the Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 bce), diplomatic marriage was carried out not only between kings and their vassals, but on a grand scale at an international level as the Great Kings of the Hittites, Mitanni, Assyrians, Kassites, and Egyptians schemed to make alliances and outwit their enemies. The diplomatic correspondence recovered from Amarna in Egypt contains a number of revealing letters about arranged royal marriages. But the diverse cultures involved had different concepts of the political relationships created by marriage ties. The pharaoh did not permit Egyptian royal women to marry foreign kings, but he did allow foreign women to join his household. Thus the Egyptians saw marriage alliances as acknowledging their own superiority, while the Near Eastern kings considered that they gained the upper hand by becoming the fathers-in-law of the pharaoh (Meier 2000: 170-1). No matter how the different kings presented such marriages to their own subjects, the fact is that they helped secure parity between the great powers rather than creating vassal relationships.
Marriage agreements between equal powers were accomplished only after lengthy negotiations (Artzi 1987: 23-6). To prove her worth and thus the worth of her father, a royal bride-to-be was sent to her new home accompanied by a large number of attendants and a huge dowry, and the groom paid a sizeable bride-price for his new wife. Anything less would have been demeaning. The Kassite king Burnaburiash wrote indignantly to the pharaoh asking, ‘‘Who is going to take her to you? With Haya (the Egyptian messenger) there are five chariots. Are they going to take her to you in (only) five chariots? Should I in these circumstances allow her to be brought to you from my house, my neighboring kings would say, ‘They have transported the daughter of the Great King to Egypt in five chariots’ ’’ (Moran 1992: text 11).
Kings were always anxious to safeguard their daughter’s status because it reflected their own. When the Hittite king Suppiluliuma (1344-1322 bce) negotiated a marriage contract between the king of Mitanni and his own daughter, he insisted that ‘‘You shall not bring my daughter into the position of second wife. In Mitanni she shall rule as queen’’ (Schulman 1979: 178 n. 3). Even though the kings maintained lively communication via messengers and embassies, once a woman married a foreign king, she was not able to remain in close contact with her original family. In fact, the Kassite king Kadashman-Enlil (1374?-1360 bce) felt compelled to complain to the pharaoh, ‘‘Here you are asking for my daughter in marriage, but my sister whom my father gave you was (already) there with you, and no one has seen her (so as to know) if now she is alive or if she is dead’’ (Moran 1992: text 1).
Since so many diplomatic marriages took place during this period, kinship ties between the different royal houses became complicated, sometimes with serious political consequences. For example, Mubalitat-Sherua, the daughter of the Assyrian king Assur-uballit I, married the Babylonian king Burnaburiash II and bore a son. When that son was subsequently murdered in a rebellion in 1333 bce, Assur-uballit, as the murdered king’s grandfather, retaliated by invading Babylonia, putting down the revolt, and choosing the next Babylonian king.
It is clear that the treatment of foreign-born royal wives fluctuated with changing political situations. After the Hittite king Suppiluliuma died in 1322 bce, his Babylonian-born wife was accused of using witchcraft to kill the wife of the new king, Murshili II. Although Murshili got permission from the gods to execute his stepmother, he decided instead to remove her from priestly office, thus substantially reducing her power (Murphy 2002:441). The accusation was undoubtedly politically motivated, probably in part by the desire to oust a foreigner from an influential position. Under the successive large empires of the first millennium, the Assyrian, Babylonian, and finally Persian, diplomatic marriages usually took place between the prevailing king and his vassals, rather than between kings of equal status as in the Late Bronze Age (Rollig 1974: 21-3; Dalley 1998b).
In all periods ultimate authority resided with the king, and every king struggled to gain, maintain, and expand his authority. He mustered the help of everyone he could, particularly family members. Thus, kings called upon the women most closely associated with them - their wives, mothers, and daughters - to carry out civic, political, or religious duties.
World History
