Kingship and Queenship in the Ancient Near Eastern Empires of the First Millennium BCE: Presentation to the Public as Builder

Empires and kingship are long-standing topics of research in ancient Near Eastern studies; the study of queenship has gradually received more attention over recent decades. However, discussions of the social implications of kingship and queenship, comparisons of the gender roles, and their study across several empires remain rare. The paper at hand takes the unprecedented step of such a comparative analysis by tracing a specific detail of royal ideology, namely the presentation of the king and queen to the public as builders, across seven major Near Eastern empires following and/or interacting with each other throughout the first millennium BCE: the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Teispid-Achaemenid, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Parthian, and Roman empires. Drawing on the available textual, material, and visual sources from the ancient contemporary contexts of each empire and from Classical reception history, we showcase the potential of a longue-durée comparison for the social institutions of kingship and of queenship, giving full attention and space also to the lesser known empires and the queens’ roles. To achieve this, we present first a synopsis of the key findings per empire and role, followed by a diachronic study of three aspects of gender comparison: concerning the empire-internal portfolios of king and queen, the joint presentation as a couple, and the question of how far the roles of king and queen mirror or complement each other. We conclude with some pertinent (albeit tentative) results on the features shared by some or all of the empires as well as their outstanding idiosyncracies.