Neo-Assyrian Women Revisited.

• Author: Melville, Sarah C.

The discovery of graves in the NW palace at Nimrud in 1989 nearly doubled the number of Neo-Assyrian queens known by name. (1) Magnificent grave goods, including exquisitely fashioned jewelry and vessels made of gold, glass, and crystal, along with skeletal remains and funerary inscriptions, have complicated our previous understanding of royal women and raised a host of questions. What did the office of queen (MI.E.GAL, segallu) actually entail? Did she hold the title for life or just while her husband reigned? Could more than one woman use the title simultaneously? Could the king replace his queen at will? How did the king's mother fit into the picture? What was the status of other women who lived and worked in the palace? Among recent publications addressing these questions, Saana Svard's Women and Power in Neo-Assyrian Palaces stands out as the first to approach the subject through a modern theoretical lens. (2) The volume under review represents her revised dissertation. Ambitious in scope and thoroughly researched, this stimulating book not only forces us to reconsider the roles of Assyrian women, but also our assumptions about power relationships in Assyria.

In the introduction, after carefully locating her investigation within women's studies and gender studies, Svard notes that most publications treating Neo-Assyrian women have considered them separately from men and only within a hierarchical power structure. In order to broaden this view, she proposes "to test the hypothesis that by examining the evidence from two interrelated perspectives--reading the evidence for finding hierarchical power relations (Part I) and heterarchical power relations (Part II)--I will gain a better understanding of power in the Neo-Assyrian palaces and specifically women's role in the exercise of power" (p. 18). A second goal is to demonstrate that modern theories of power can provide insight into ancient societies. Accordingly, the book is divided into two parts, one devoted to hierarchy and the other to heterarchy (a system of unranked relations). Each section begins with a chapter that delves into the respective theory involved.

The theory chapters document every step of the author's personal intellectual journey and reveal how she formulated her views about different kinds of power. They include valuable information and useful terminology, yet one questions whether the book (as opposed to the dissertation) needed such lengthy exposition. Svard's conclusions about hierarchy and heterarchy do indeed shed light on her subject. However, she would have served her core argument better had she summarized her theoretical methodology in the book's introduction and reiterated specific points when pertinent to her discussion of Assyrian women. A succinct theoretical precis would have highlighted her key ideas. As it is, the theory chapters threaten to overwhelm the Assyrian material that she covers in three separate chapters. In the following, I review the key points of her argument, and then offer some suggestions of my own.

Part I, chapter 2 investigates hierarchical power, of which Svard identifies two interrelated types, structural and individual. In the process, she rehearses the ideas of a wide range of intellectuals and scholars, including Hannah Arendt, Max Weber, Michael Mann, Bruce Lincoln, Steven Lukes, and Anthony Giddens, to name only a few. Eventually, she settles on Giddens' approach on the grounds that he sees power not only in terms of societal structure but also as a product of individual agency. Thus, Svard observes, "social institutions exert constraints, but they do not determine a person's actions. The institutions rather enable an individual to achieve goals and by attaining these goals, the individuals at the same time remake the structures" (p. 36). This understanding of hierarchical power proves useful later, because it leaves room for heterarchical action.

After the lengthy discussion of theories of power, in chapter 3 Svard analyzes all the evidence for queens and queen mothers in order to define the type of hierarchical power that they wielded. First, the author concentrates on the office of MI.E.GAL (segallu, 'queen'), which she considers a largely autonomous institution that operated independently from the king. Svard posits that only one woman at a time fulfilled the queen's duties. Since the queen occupied her own position in the hierarchy, she could remain in office even after the king died. When circumstances made it expedient, however, the new king could replace the old queen with his wife or mother. Put...