Sammu-ramat

Assyrian queen (r. c. 823-807 b.c.e.)

• Born: c. 840 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: After 807 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Unknown

Early Life

Nothing is known of the early life of Sammu-ramat (SAW-mew RAW-maht) except for that which is provided in the fanciful stories of her life originally collected by the Greek author Ctesias of Cnidus, who referred to her as Semiramis. He incorporated the legends regarding this remarkable woman in his Persika (The Fragments of the Persika of Ktesias, 1888) while he also served as a physician in the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes in the fifth century b.c.e. While his work no longer survives, his account of the beautiful, adventurous, and cruel Assyrian queen was subsequently included in the writings of Diodorus Siculus, who wrote a universal history in the first century b.c.e.

According to Ctesias, Sammu-ramat was the daughter of the Syrian goddess Derketo and a handsome Syrian youth for whom she developed a great passion. However, after giving birth to a daughter, the goddess was consumed with shame. She killed the father of her child, left the infant to die in the fields, and threw herself into a lake, where she was transformed into a fish. Abandoned, the beautiful baby girl was cared for by doves until she was discovered by shepherds who gave her to Simmas, the chief shepherd, to raise until she was of a marriageable age. When an officer of the Assyrian court by the name of Onnes was sent to inspect the royal flocks, he was so entranced by Sammu-ramat’s beauty that he married her and took her back to Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, where she eventually gave birth to two sons, Hyapates and Hydaspes. Once there, however, her beauty, intelligence, and courage brought her to the attention of Ninus, the king and founder of Nineveh.

Ninus was engaged in the conquest of Bactria, and Onnes had accompanied him on the campaign. As the campaign wore on, Onnes began to miss his wife and sent for her to join him. When she arrived at the siege of the city of Bactria, she noticed a weakness in the defense of the city’s acropolis. She then led an attacking force that captured the acropolis; as a result, the defense of the city collapsed, and the conquest of Bactria was complete. Ninus, now aware of Sammu-ramat’s cunning and bravery as well as her beauty, prevailed on Onnes to relinquish any claims he had on his wife so that he, Ninus, could marry her. Because of the threats of the king and his sorrow at the prospect of losing his wife, Onnes hanged himself. Sammu-ramat was now free to marry the Assyrian king. Ninus fathered a son, Ninyas, with Sammu-ramat but then died before Ninyas was old enough to rule. This allowed Sammu-ramat to engage in the series of exploits on which her fame rests.

In addition to the account above, Diodorus Siculus preserved an alternate account of Sammu-ramat’s rise to power given by Athenaeus and other unnamed historians. They contended that Sammu-ramat had been a courtesan in her early life. Captivated by her beauty, the king of Assyria married her and then elevated her to a position of power in his court. According to this account, she repaid her husband for his love by contriving to imprison him so that she could rule in his stead, which she did into her old age.

Life’s Work

Historically, Sammu-ramat was, as a boundary stone (annotated in 1990 by Veysel Donbaz) proclaimed, the “palace woman of Shamshi-Adad (king of Assyria from 824-811 b.c.e.), mother of Adad-nirari III (king of Assyria from 811-782 b.c.e.), and daughter-in-law of Shalmaneser (king of Assyria from 858-824 b.c.e.).” While it is tempting to believe the legendary stories of her reign as a sovereign, it should be noted that Assyria did not typically have queens who ruled in the modern sense. Nevertheless, the prominent inclusion of her name in this boundary stone, along with references to her in two other inscriptions, indicates that she was an important figure within the Assyrian court. As such, it is believed that, following the death of her husband, she served as regent for her son, Adad-nirari, for at least four years until he was old enough to take the reins of power himself.

The legend of Sammu-ramat outstripped these historical references to her reign, increasing her fame as numerous fanciful activities and exploits were attributed to her. The fifth century historian Herodotus briefly mentioned that she ruled over the city of Babylon for five generations, during which time she was credited with building a series of levies to control the flooding of the Euphrates River. Ctesias, by contrast, credited her with the founding of Babylon itself. These claims may be a confused memory of the work of Naqi’a-Zakutu, wife of Sennacherib of Assyria (r. 704-681 b.c.e.), who supervised the reconstruction of Babylon after her husband had destroyed it c. 689 b.c.e. Nevertheless, one may suppose that the woman who revealed her unbridled pride by inscribing her triple relationship with Assyrian royalty (Shamshi-Adad, Adad-nirari, and Shalmaneser) on border stones must have been a formidable woman in her own right.

According to the legend recorded by Ctesias, Sammu-ramat first determined to construct her own fame after her husband, Ninus, died by engaging in a number of building projects. She erected a large mound over the tomb of her husband that could be seen at a great distance from Nineveh. Then she began the construction of the city of Babylon, with its imposing walls and towers and numerous temples and palaces. Ctesias presented a detailed account of how she divided the work of construction among large cadres of workers and gathered the greatest artisans to outfit the city with remarkable embellishments. Ctesias also included a lengthy catalog of wonders that she included in her construction of the city. He credited her with the construction of protective walls so thick that two chariots could be driven abreast of each other around the entire circuit of the city.

Reportedly, she spanned the Euphrates, which flowed through the city, with a massive bridge and ordered the construction of a tunnel that went under the river to connect the palaces she built on both sides of the river. She also erected an exceedingly high temple, from which astronomical observations were made, and then placed enormous statues of Zeus, Rhea, and Hera fashioned of beaten gold on its top. After completing the construction of Babylon, she turned her attention to other places in Mesopotamia and surrounding lands to build several other cities, parks, and palaces.

Ctesias also claimed that Sammu-ramat led numerous military expeditions, which allowed her to subjugate Egypt and Libya and to attempt the conquest of India. In this latter venture, he said that she crossed the Indus River on a bridge that she commanded to be built in order to engage Strabrobates, the king of the Indians, in combat. To counter the superiority of his forces—which included elephants—she commissioned the manufacture of several dummy elephants to inspire dread in the enemy. Despite her preparations and bravery in battle, however, the Indian forces of Strabrobates bested Sammu-ramat and her army in battle, forcing her to retreat beyond the Indus. While retreating, the daring queen received both an arrow wound in her arm and a javelin wound in her back. Nevertheless, she preserved the remnants of her army by bravely enduring pain while she cut the moorings of the bridge that she had constructed over the Indus, thus thwarting Strabrobates’ pursuit.

In addition to her building projects and military exploits, Sammu-ramat was famous for her sensuality coupled with extreme cruelty. In addition to the account that reported an early career as a courtesan, she allegedly engaged in numerous affairs after becoming queen. Freed from the constraints of marriage following Ninus’s death and intending to retain her freedom to rule alone, Sammu-ramat refused to marry again, according to Ctesias. Instead, she selected lovers from among the most handsome of her soldiers and, after consorting with them, had them executed.

The legend asserts that, after her several exploits, Sammu-ramat abandoned her throne in favor of her son Ninyas. According to Ctesias, she did this to fulfill a prophesy that she had received from the priests of Amen while sojourning in Egypt. The oracle stated that “she would disappear from among men and receive undying honor among some of the peoples of Asia, and that this would take place when her son Ninyas should conspire against her.” According to Ctesias, when Sammu-ramat discovered a conspiracy against her in which Ninyas was involved, she relinquished the throne in favor of her son, rather than punish the conspirators. After commanding the governors of her realm to obey Ninyas as they had obeyed her, Sammu-ramat turned into a dove and flew away.

The legendary stories regarding Sammu-ramat that found their way into the writings of the Greek authors did not fare well with Berosus, a Babylonian priest (fl. c. 290 b.c.e.) who compiled lists of kings who had ruled in Mesopotamia as part of his Babylfnļaka (c. 290 b.c.e.; The Babyloniaka of Berossus, 1978). While the full scope of his refutation of Herodotus and Ctesias is not known, it is certain that he contradicted their identification of Sammu-ramat as a queen of Babylon. Diodorus Siculus was also rightfully skeptical of the legendary exploits and fate of Sammu-ramat as recorded by Ctesias; nevertheless, Ctesias was correct when recounting these stories in stating that Sammu-ramat was among “the most renowned of all women of whom we have any record.”

Significance

Historically, Sammu-ramat joined the small but important sorority of powerful women who enjoyed unusual prominence in the male-dominated ancient world. Whatever the true details of her life might have been beyond the few inscriptional references that have survived, her legend as Sammu-ramat became part of the recollection of Assyria’s fabled power long after its cities had been reduced to rubble.

Bibliography

Donbaz, Veysel. “Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae in the Antakya and Kahramanmaras Museums.” Annual Review of the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamias Project 8 (1990): 9. Describes the commemorative stelae found at the site of ancient Assyria, one of which mentions Sammu-ramat.

Luckenbill, D. D., trans. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. London: Histories & Mysteries of Man, 1989. A collection of inscriptions found in Mesopotamia from the period of Sammu-ramat.

Oldfather, C. H., trans. Diodorus of Sicily. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962-1983. A translation of Diodorus’s work, which includes Ctesias of Cnidus’s account of the legends regarding Sammu-ramat.

Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. A treatment of the full sweep of history in ancient Mesopotamia, which places Sammu-ramat in the full historical context of the region.

Verbrugghe, Gerald P., and John M. Wickersham, trans. Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. This history contains an introduction, bibliography, and index.