Shammuramat

Shammuramat (Akkadian: Sammu-rāmat or Sammu-ramāt), also known as Sammuramat or Shamiram and Semiramis, was a powerful queen of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Beginning her career as the primary queen consort of the king Shamshi-Adad V (r.824–811 BC), Shammuramat reached an unusually prominent position in the reign of her son Adad-nirari III (r.811–783 BC). Though there is dispute in regard to Shammuramat's formal status and position, and if she should be considered a coregent, it is clear that she was among the most powerful and influential women of the ancient Near East and the Iron Age in general; she is the only known Assyrian queen to have retained her status as queen after the death of her husband and the only known woman from Mesopotamia to have partaken in, and perhaps even led, a military campaign.

Shammuramat's origin is unclear; her name could equally well be of West or East Semitic origin. Proposed regions of origin include the Akkadian-speaking Assyria itself, the ethnolinguistically indistinguishable Babylonia (which spoke the Babylonian variety of Akkadian), Levant and Phoenicia. If originating from abroad, she is typically assumed to have been a princess. Nothing is known of her life or relative influence and power in the reign of her husband. Under Adad-nirari, her role was exceptionally prominent for a woman of the time. Per the Pazarcık Stele, she accompanied her son on a campaign against the HittitesKummuh in Hittite and both she and Adad-nirari are credited with expanding the borders of the empire in all directions into the Levant, Anatolia and Persia. In some inscriptions, local governors made dedications not only to the king (as was customary) but also to Shammuramat. All evidence suggests that Shammuramat was among the most renowned figures of her time.

Shammuramat was immortalized in later Persian, Levantine and Greco-Roman literary tradition as the legendary Assyrian warrior-queen and heroine Semiramis, a half-divine daughter of the North Syrian goddessAtargatis and the wife of the fictional Ninus, the legendary and mythical founder of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire. Among the legendary feats ascribed to Semiramis were securing victory during a siege of Bactra, the foundation of Babylon, and the invention of a type of pants/trousers later popular among the Medes, Persians and Parthians. Numerous parallels can be drawn between the historical Shammuramat and the legendary Semiramis, whose feats are mythical rather than historical. Semiramis and Shammuramat are both still used as popular given names for girls among the Assyrian people today.