2020/09/23 by Sébastian Fink · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Ancient Near East History #Eurasian Exchange Networks #Families in Therapy and Culture
paper · doi:10.4324/9780429434105-15
openalex publication_date 2020/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Queens and royal women played an important role in Mesopotamian history, if only due to their privileged access to the most powerful man of their times; however, as the textual evidence focuses on the king and his deeds, our evidence for the active political engagement of royal women is somewhat limited. This chapter gives a short overview of the Mesopotamian textual evidence and then presents several case studies of Mesopotamian royal women. The representation of two prototypical female goddesses, the mother-goddess Ninsun and Ishtar, goddess of love and war, is taken as a starting point to approach the Mesopotamian conceptualization of royal women. The main part of the chapter is devoted to case studies of several royal women (Ku-Baba, Enheduanna, Sammu-ramat, Naqi ͗a and Adad-guppi).