The seal of Tašmetum-šarrat, Sennacherib’s queen, and its impressions

Abstract

One of the many achievements of Mario Fales, and certainly one of his most visible ones, is his key role in the renaissance of Neo-Assyrian studies from the 1970s onwards, both by contributing to virtually all aspects of the political, cultural, social, legal and economic history of the Assyrian Empire and as a major figure in the ongoing publication of the primary sources. It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this paper to him: it deals with a seal of a member of the Assyrian royal family and its ancient impressions, two of which are attested on a tablet edited by Mario in his book Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration (= State Archives of Assyria 7), Helsinki 1992; with J. N. Postgate). The seal in question was acquired in 2002 by the British Museum and can be identified with reasonable certainty as that of the Assyrian queen Tasmetum-sarrat, the “beloved wife” of Sennacherib (704‒681 BC). Three impressions of this very seal are also housed in the BM collections. After discussing all four, I will briefly address the significance of scorpion imagery as a symbol of the Assyrian queen, comparing its presence on this seal with other uses of the same image on items owned by various Neo-Assyrian queens. I will conclude with a consideration of the seal’s owner, discussing the issue of how many queens Sennacherib may have had and who would have been the queen at the time of his murder in 681 BC. The term “queen” will be used in this article to refer to the king’s primary wife and the mother of the crown prince. The Assyrians reserved the word sarrutu (Bab. sarratu), the feminine form of sarru, “king”, exclusively for goddesses and referred to the wife of the king as “palace woman” (issi ekalli > sēgallu = MI.E.GAL) (Parpola 1988).