Queens in high places

By Fran Gillespie

Arabian queens didn’t just sit on thrones. They rode on them.

So says American archaeologist Dr Jurin Zarins, who is intrigued by ancient Assyrian inscriptions describing female leaders of Arabian tribes. Unveiled and wearing long robes, these women rode into battle on the backs of camels, loudly encouraging their men to even more valiant efforts against the enemy. Or so the stories say.

In a presentation to the Qatar Natural History Group, he explored the idea, seemingly incongruous today in the Middle East’s male-dominated society, that women once ruled over Arabian tribes. Were they priestess-queens, warrior-queens, or political leaders? What little we know comes from Assyrian records, and, oddly, these female leaders are mentioned in no other literature of the time.

Arising in Mesopotamia in the mid-10th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire builders conquered and ruled vast regions of the Near East, Mediterranean and North Africa.

For 300 years it was the most powerful state on earth. The ruthless destruction by Assyrian forces of the state of Israel is vividly described in the Bible, and the names of their greatest kings — Tiglath-Pileser, Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal, Sargon I and II, are still well-known today.  

The Assyrians were a tidy-minded people, who liked making lists, not only of their own rulers but of other people’s. So it’s thanks to them, said Dr Zarins, that we know about heroines such as  Shamsi, an Arab queen who reigned in the 8th century BCE. She courageously took on Tiglath-Pileser’s army and lost, but was allowed to survive as a tribute-payer. Other records tell of tribes led by queens roaming the lands on the southern border of the empire, sometimes acting as border guards, sometimes the subject of attack by the Assyrians.

Low-relief carved stone panels in the British Museum, dating to the 7th century BCE, tell the story of the Assyrian campaigns. Like comic book strips they unfold the action. Ashurbanipal charges into battle on a magnificent Arabian horse, men are trampled under the hooves of horses and camels, spears fly, archers ride two at a time on the backs of camels. An Arab tent blazes fiercely, beside it a man and a woman lie dead. Queen Shamsi herself appears in one scene, leading camels.

The most famous queen from this period is of course the Queen of Sheba, who came from either Yemen or Ethiopia. A woman who did things in style, she made a state visit to King Solomon and presented him with four and half tonnes of gold: a diplomatic gift that easily outshines those exchanged by even the wealthiest potentates today.   

So where do the mobile thrones come in? Cut to the 20th century AD, when until the advent of modern transport, nomadic bedouin women rode on the backs of camels in a litter known as a hawdaj.

Bedouin society has long regarded the riding litter as a powerful symbol of the woman. The frame was made by women from the wood of the tamarisk or pomegranate tree, bent while green or after soaking in water, and was hung with curtains behind which a woman could take off her veil. Decorated hawdaj were used to transport a bride to her new home, and women rode in them on long journeys.

Such a form of transport is immensely ancient,  Zarins explained. Small clay figurines from Muweilah in Sharjah, UAE, found in 1996 and dating to 1000 BCE, show camels carrying a saddle or possibly a litter, and colourful murals from the Iron Age city site of Qaryat Al-Faw in Saudi Arabia depict camels carrying high litters.  

There was also a spectacular and elaborate winged litter known as a kethab or zetab, a kind of riding tent, used not only for carrying a woman and her children but also for baby animals. Comfortably padded with rugs and cushions, hung with light cloth that caught the breeze, such immense structures swaying on the backs of camels could not fail to impress.  

Zarins believes that the ancient queens of Arabia could well have led their tribes riding in state in such elaborate structures as these.

Some tribes marched into battle accompanied by a large, boxy construction known as a markab, decorated with the black plumes of the Arabian ostrich, now extinct.  It was a kind of shrine, symbolising the honour of the tribe in war. There is an undoubted link between such ancient Arabian practices and the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible, which was also carried into battle and was the most sacred and important object owned by its people.   

So perhaps, 3,000 years ago, these powerful female rulers rode into battle perched high in their swaying thrones, and alongside them went the markab, the honour of the tribe which men gave their lives to defend.  

It’s an interesting theory, and it may be that future excavations in Arabia and regions ruled over long ago by the Assyrians may reveal more evidence to support it.

1) The Ruwala go into battle, with war banner and markab, in the 1920s.

2) The markab or ‘throne’ of the Ruwala tribe in N Arabia, photographed in the 1920s.

3) Hawdaj or riding litter.

4) Detail of a woven saddlebag showing a camel carrying a winged litter, or kethab.