June 5, 2024 • 42 mins
Amy discusses the multi-sensory presence of the queens of Assyria. What was queenly dress and what meaning did each part of it convey? How does the evidence from art compare to what we learn from archaeology? Can we identify personal choice? She also talks about what it's like to wear queenly clothes, and what experimental archaeology can tell us.
2:45 sources for textiles
5:13 experimental archaeology
6:37 tombs of the queens
8:35 art versus archaeology
9:50 queenly dress
14:28 symbolism
17:03 individual choice
20:58 burialwear
21:54 craftsmen for the queen
22:44 smell, sound, and other senses
26:40 international dimension
28:39 new book
30:50 beauty standards
34:55 posture
37:41 colours
Amy’s university page
Amy’s Academia page
Amy’s personal website
Music by Ruba Hillawi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Early excavations often targetedthe ruined palaces of ancient
(00:36):
Iraq. Among the carved reliefsdecorating the walls of
Assyria's palaces weredepictions of the king and his
courtiers; one also depicts aqueen. More than 100 years
later, excavations revealedastonishing new evidence: the
bodies of some of the queensthemselves, with their jewels
(00:57):
and fragments of the clothessuggested by the reliefs.
Despite their near absence fromlarge-scale palace art, the
queens would have been importantfigures at court. They would
have made an unforgettableimpression around the palace. As
with so much of courtparaphernalia, the royal figure
conveyed all sorts of messages.
What would the queens wear, andwhat did it mean? Dress was
(01:20):
primarily visual, but othersenses were invoked as well.
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
(01:46):
let's meet today's guest.
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us.
Amy Gansell (02:00):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jon Taylor (02:02):
Can you tell us please
you do?
Amy Gansell (02:06):
I'm Amy Gansell.
I'm an art history professor atSt. John's University in New
York City. I'm also thecoordinator for our Women's
Gender and Sexuality Studiesprogram here. And I specialise
in studying the ancient Assyrianqueens. So, women and their
representations in art andarchaeology in the ancient Near
East, broadly.
Jon Taylor (02:27):
Okay, thank you. And today we are going to talk about
the Assyrian queens and dress.
First of all, how do we actuallyknow about dress at all? Women's
dress or Assyrian queenly dress?
Textiles tend not to survive, dothey? What sources do we have
for this topic?
Amy Gansell (02:45):
Well, we actually have a good deal of evidence
about ancient textiles andclothing if we put together a
lot of different resources.
There is some archaeologicalevidence, particularly from
Nimrud. From inside the queens'coffins, there have been some
fragments, little bits oftextiles, preserved that have
been analysed and tested todetermine that they were
(03:06):
primarily linen textiles thatwere used for presumably for
their clothing, but also maybeas shrouds to wrap their dressed
bodies in. In addition to that,there is textual evidence that
refers to types of fabric,treatments of fabrics such as
dyes and bleaching, as well asdifferent types of garments.
(03:27):
And then of course, we have theart historical record. Now, it's
difficult to match up some ofthe texts, the ancient
terminology that we have, towhat we find in the
archaeological record or thevisual record, because
obviously, nothing comes with alabel. But we do have a lot of
examples, especially in thevisual arts. We know from
(03:50):
looking at images in art thatroyal garments were draped and
belted and that's something I'llget back to in a moment. We also
know that royal clothing washighly decorated, especially
with imagery that's evokingflowers, maybe trees. In some of
the images of kings, we see morecomplex narrative scenes that
(04:11):
relate to those that are knownto us from large-scale Assyrian
art (04:15):
scenes of hunt, war, and ritual.
So going back to the aspect ofthe garments being draped and
belted, how do we know aboutroyal clothing? Well, if we put
the ancient evidence togetherand we apply it, we can attempt
to reconstruct based on what ispreserved what an actual garment
(04:35):
might have looked like. And I indoing so worked with a costume
designer and scholar of theancient Near East, Elizabeth
Clancy. And we used fabric anddraped according to matching up
what we saw in art, and she wasable to discover the manner in
which a queen's garment wouldhave been draped in 360 degrees.
(04:59):
The problem with art is itusually just shows a profile
view. So we're kind ofstruggling to imagine what the
entire living dressed body wouldhave looked like. But these
contemporary reconstructionefforts are taking us there too.
Jon Taylor (05:13):
Brilliant, thank you. As you were saying that, I
realised there's an obviousquestion I missed off, which is
about experimentalarchaeological approach.
Amy Gansell (05:20):
Yeah.
Jon Taylor (05:20):
What did you learn from doing it in the physical
world, recreating these things?
What did that teach you that youcouldn't learn from iconography,
say?
Amy Gansell (05:28):
Certainly, it taught us what the garment look
like in 360 degrees. It givesyou a sense. I even got to be a
model, to attempt to wear agarment that she draped on me.
It gives you a sense of how itwould feel to be in a draped
garment. It's both andrestrictive compared to what
we're used to in modernclothing, but it's also very
(05:50):
flexible and flowing with thefabric. We also observed that
the way the garment falls whenyou just comfortably sit down in
a chair is not what it lookslike in art. But if you
carefully bunch up the hem andtuck it underneath you, and sit
there perfectly still, you canrecreate the same garment lines,
(06:12):
and hemlines, and drapery linesthat we see in art. So prior to
this experiment, we kind ofassumed that what we saw in art
was an idealised image. Maybethe garment could not possibly
fall in that manner. But we doknow now that just like in
modern fashion photography, ifyou pose something very
(06:33):
carefully, you can achieve thatideal appearance.
Ellie Bennett (06:37):
I love that idea of idealism versus the real
element, and especially theexperience. I'm sure I've told
you that I really think thateveryone should try wearing what
people are wearing inrepresentations of the ancient
world. I wanted to very quicklyask you: when you were going
through the different sourcesthat you have available, I think
most assyriologists are fairlyfamiliar with the texts, and
(06:59):
those doing new Assyrian historyare quite familiar with the huge
images in the palaces. But couldyou give us a quick introduction
to the tombs of the queens?
That's a really unique set ofsources.
Amy Gansell (07:12):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And the tombs are
the most recently discoveredpiece of the puzzle here. They
were discovered in the late1980s, 1988/1989, into the early
90s, in Iraq at the city ofNimrud, which is near Mosul
today. They were originallypublished in the late 90s, and
(07:33):
in a catalogue in 2000. But theydidn't gain as much
international attention as faras the breadth of their
archaeological material. Becausethe catalogue was published in
Arabic. There were very, veryfew copies of that catalogue
available. And the otherpublications that came out,
there was even in some popularmagazines, news articles that
(07:57):
came out, but they wouldhighlight one or two, or maybe a
dozen treasure artifacts. Theydidn't really give us a sense of
what the artifacts of dress fromhead to toe would have entailed,
let alone the consistency withwhich we were finding these
elements of dress across thedifferent burials of these royal
(08:19):
women. I started working on themin the early 2000s, when not
much was published. And they'regaining more and more attention
and being more integrated intoour research, not just on dress,
but on royal culture overall.
Ellie Bennett (08:35):
I have a quick question as well about do you
have a sense of any differencebetween what these women were
wearing in the burials to whatthey represented in the images?
Amy Gansell (08:49):
Well, we're dealing with a very fragmentary record,
especially with the images. Sothe large scale detailed images
that we have of queenly dressdate to the seventh century. And
the material that we have fromthe tomb dates earlier to
probably the ninth and eighthcentury. So it's hard to
(09:12):
correlate. You know, what we seeis not what we get in these
tombs. But if you look back atwhat people were buried in, in
the 1800s, and what we'redepicted in today, it's not
gonna match up either. So wecan't just assume that their
images and their burial dresswere different for some cultural
reason at that moment. But wealso can tell there's lots that
(09:38):
was found in the tomb, lots ofartifacts that are not depicted
in art. I can get into that inmore detail and tell you more
about what the tombs reveal tous that is not preserved in any
other record if you want.
Jon Taylor (09:50):
Yes, please. I think that might be a good time to do
it. There is this other questionon a very basic level: what
would a queen actually wear?
Amy Gansell (09:59):
Sure, let do an overview of what a queen would
actually wear. And I do believethat these queens were wearing
these ensembles, these royalensembles, in life as well as in
death. That it wasn't just aspecial costume for the
afterlife, or for a funeral orburial. That what we find in the
tombs is indicative of what theysat on the throne in, in the
(10:23):
palace in life. So, startingfrom that top, you would have a
diadem and also crown, soheadgear. It seems that some of
the queens were buried withmultiple options for what to
wear on their head. So it seemsthat perhaps for different
occasions or different contexts,different headgear was worn.
There's a type of diadem that'sconsistently found across
(10:46):
multiple of these tombs. So thatseems to be kind of the standard
base diadem for a top-rankedroyal woman, i.e. the queen. And
then these elaborate crowns,each of which is unique that
have been found in the tombsmight have differentiated them
on an individual level. But justto have one of those crowns
(11:06):
would have been a queenly crown,in addition to the diadem. But
it seems to be worn separately.
You couldn't put a crown overthe diadem necessarily. You'd
cover up your diadem. So movingon down, the crown sits on the
hair. So some of the diametersof the crowns and diadems are
quite wide. They're wider thanmost women's heads.
(11:27):
Significantly wider. So itsuggests that the queens had
very poofy hair. They might havebeen styling it. They might
though, have padded theirhairstyles out with hair pieces
or were wearing wigs. So thehair is something that I really
consider as part of the dress ofwhat a queen would wear.
(11:50):
And then of course, we have thejewelry ensemble. Starting on
the top, you would have a pairof earrings, so an earring in
each ear. You would havenecklace or necklaces. There are
also a lot of beads found in thetomb. So they may have had long
strings of beads as it's beenreconstructed by archaeologists.
But it's possible that some ofthe beads were beading on
(12:12):
garments or wraps that thequeens were wearing. Then, of
course they had that garment,the draped garment. The garment
itself might have beenornamented or it was definitely
ornamented, but it might havebeen ornamented with embroidery
and or with little metalmedallions. It's like the
sequins of ancient time. We havegold medallions, very thin, but
(12:36):
they have attachments on theback like a loop that you could
sew onto a garment. Or some ofthem have holes, like
buttonholes that you could sewthem on with. And that would
have covered the garment. Interms of the embroidery, some of
the tufts of fabric that Imentioned earlier, have evidence
-- it's been microscopicallyexamined -- that looks like it
(12:58):
may have been partlyembroidered. So that's another
form of decoration on thegarment surface. They also had
tassels and fringes on thegarments. So all of that is
creating motion and brillianceadding to the body.
Moving on down from the torsocovering, there's some artifacts
(13:18):
that we don't know how they wereworn. I think they might have
been draped over the shoulders.
I call them body ornaments, butwe don't have any depictions and
in to explain what they were.
Then you would have braceletsworn in pairs; one on each, at
least one on each wrist. And youwould have that matched with
anklets. Again, worn in pairs.
And the anklets, they're ribbedand quite high. And if you just
(13:41):
see an image of it in art, youmight think they're wearing a
stack of half a dozen bangles ontheir ankles. But these are cuff
bracelets made of metal thathave the ridges that suggest
that they're wearing a stack ofindividual anklets. They had
also rings, and rings come insets of 10. So you would have a
(14:02):
ring on every finger. It'ssymmetrical, but covering every
finger with a ring. There's evena tiny set of 10 rings that are
child's size. And they havechains that attach them to a
bracelet. It's almost as if itwas training to get a young
royal child used to wearingrings on all their fingers, but
(14:24):
they wouldn't be able to playwith them and take them off or
possibly lose them.
Jon Taylor (14:28):
Hmm. Do you think these features are female
centered? Are they royalcentered? Or royal females? What
Amy Gansell (14:36):
Well, I think that they are royal centered. They're
does it symbolise?
emblems of empire. And part ofwhat's the imagery when we start
looking at at the jewelry, ithas images of trees, of flowers,
a lot of pomegranate show up.
You see that same kind of motifshowing up in the decoration
(14:58):
inside the palace. And asdepicted on the garments and
objects associated with theking. So it's kind of a shared
iconography, a shared image ofempire that the queen is
participating in. I think that'sreally important, because she's
partaking in this imagery. It'snot just what queens where. It's
(15:21):
what empire wears. It's whatempire is. It produces her as
part of the matrix of thepalace; part of the matrix of
the empire, and on par as apartner to the king.
Now, within the ensemble of whatthey're wearing, queens are
wearing a different head dressthan the king, because you need
(15:43):
to be able to recognise them,immediately announcing rank.
This is the king. This is thequeen. The crown prince would
also have his own specialisedhead dress. And then in terms of
the types of jewelry worn, thereseem to be some earring forms
that have pendants that arehanging down; just a singular
(16:04):
cylindrical kind of pendant.
That seems to be associated morewith men and eunuchs in the
court. And we don't have anyexamples of that showing up
depicted on queens or in theirtombs. Whereas the queens'
earrings are morecrescent-shaped, with tiny
pendants that might dangle downoff of them almost like a
fringe. So there's somegendering, I think, in the
(16:26):
design of the types of jewelry.
Also men and eunuchs also werewearing cuffs on the tops of
their arms to show off, or toenhance the appearance of their
biceps. And women's musculature,for ideals of femininity was not
something that was emphasised.
The female body was verysmoothly presented, and not
(16:48):
defined in terms of musculature.
So you don't have something in aclamping around the bicep like
you see in the other genders,but she would have the bracelets
on her wrists. Those are justsome examples.
Ellie Bennett (17:03):
So were these items of dress the same across
the board? Or is there any hintof individual or personal choice
in the dress of the queens?
Amy Gansell (17:13):
That is a great question. And there is actually
a lot of difference within thesets of jewelry that were found
in the tombs. So overall, therewas an ensemble, that seems like
it was followed according toconvention. Just that what I
described from head to toe thata queen would wear. That is
(17:36):
queenly dress. But within thatensemble, there looks like
there's significant variationfrom queen to queen. And even
just like in our own lives foran individual, perhaps on a
day-to-day basis, or, at leastaccording to context and
ceremony and events, you wearsomething different. I speak of
(17:58):
these variations, because therewill be when we look in the
tombs, in the coffins, there aremany, many more pieces of
jewelry, than could possibly beworn at once. And it looks like
it's the queen's collection ofjewelry that is being buried
with her. So one day she mighthave chosen to wear one necklace
(18:20):
versus another.
We also have a sense that whilethere are some very standard
pieces, they might haverepresented, you know, like a
particular type of bracelet, forexample, that is found in two
different coffins. Two differentqueens had the same type of
bracelets. Oh, they're slightlydifferent sizes, so they were
probably scaled to theindividual wrist size. That
(18:44):
might have been a fashion of thetime. It doesn't necessarily
mean that every queen had towear a bracelet of exactly this
type. That might have been adesirable type of bracelet that
the elite women were wearing atthat time.
But then we also find totallyunique pieces of jewelry in the
different coffins. Now it'spossible because we only have a
(19:06):
little snapshot through thearchaeological evidence of what
is preserved. There's possiblethat there's 10 other bracelets
of these types I'm callingunique, but they don't survive.
They're not known to us yet. Butfrom what we can tell
archaeologically, we have theseindividual bracelets that have
maybe unique imagery, uniquedesigns. And it brings up a lot
of questions that I can'tanswer, but I'd like to
highlight (19:29):
could the queens have been personally commissioning
pieces of unique jewelry forthemselves? Were there jewelry
designers that were makingjewelry specifically for
individual queens to serve theirindividual taste or their
individual needs? And thoseneeds might have been
ceremonial, imperial, ritual,etc.
(19:52):
Some of the jewelry also that wesee as unique, it might have
come as part of a queen's dowry.
She might have brought it fromher birth family and in some
cases from the homeland of herbirth. So it might have been
coming from outside of Assyria.
There's kind of an internationalelite culture of jewelry. So
it's hard to pinpoint the originnecessarily of an earring or
(20:14):
bracelet type. But it may bethat some of this stuff is
entering into the Assyrian courtand looking unique to us. And it
would have really been showingoff her heritage or showing off
a family heirloom that wasspecial for her. So again,
within what is kind of astandard royal Assyrian kit of
(20:35):
queenly dress, there seems tohave been lots of variation,
queen to queen and perhapspersonal choice on a day-to-day
or event-to-event basis for eachqueen. What I would love to know
is, who dressed the queens whenthey were buried? And how do
they decide which of these itemsof jewelry to put on their
(20:57):
bodies?
Jon Taylor (20:58):
Hmm, I was just wondering, do you think there's
a formalised burialwear thatyou're expected to put on at
that point, rather than thatrepresenting what you'd
ordinarily wear on courtappearances or, you know, behind
the scenes?
Amy Gansell (21:11):
So there very well maybe, and that is something
that we don't have the evidenceto tell yet. If there is, it
would, at least I think beritual dress that they're being
buried in. Because this is agreat ritual process that's
taking place in the tombs.
They're also preparing to gointo the afterlife to live
eternally as royals. So theyneed to be dressed in a
(21:34):
recognisable way as a queen. ButI think it would be a queen in
ritual. But we don't have enoughcomparison to really put our
finger on what the dressensembles meant for sure that
they were buried in. But I wouldhazard a guess that they're in
their ritual dress.
Ellie Bennett (21:54):
I also really like your idea of there being an
internal economy in the palacefor just creating things just
for the queen to wear. Howlikely do you think that is? Is
there any record of jewelrymakers and textile workers in
the palace?
Amy Gansell (22:10):
There are definitely royal textile workers
and jewelry producers. However,we don't know if they were
working specifically for thequeen. We don't know if they're
just carrying out some imperialtemplate. Or if there are
individual requests for whatshould be made. There's also a
(22:31):
hairdresser that worked in thepalace that would serve the
queen and a perfume maker forthe palace as well. And all of
that, again, it's part of themultisensory aspect of the
queen's dress.
Ellie Bennett (22:44):
Do you think that is something that you could come
back to in experimental things,like this perfumery. I'd love to
hear your thoughts on whetheryou think we could recreate the
smell of being a queen.
Amy Gansell (22:54):
Ooh, that is very intriguing and tempting to
explore. So I would have to lookat some publications on the
perfumes and I don't know ifthey include recipes or
descriptions of the scent. Butif they do, that would be a
place to start. If they do not,we'd have to get very
(23:16):
experimental. And perhaps lookat the types of fruits and
floral imagery that is beingworn in their jewelry, in the
queen's dress and see, well,might she have been meant to
exude an aroma of these fruitsand flowers that she's wearing
on her body too?
Jon Taylor (23:35):
Interesting. Perhaps you could say something else
about the other senses? BecauseI think you mention, don't you,
that there was adornments on thequeenly clothing, and do you not
suggest that perhaps that gaveher a kind of visible presence,
a kind of sparkle? Or could youhear a coming as she comes down
the corridor and she has allthese jewels banging around? Is
there a multi-sensory queenlypresence that's being created
(23:56):
with dress?
Amy Gansell (23:57):
There absolutely is. The queen, like the king,
would have been presented aslarger than life, I think, just
from the example of theseoutsized headdresses and the
hairstyles and the gleam, theradiance that is bouncing off of
(24:18):
their bodies from head to toe,especially with these decorated
garments and even the parts ofthe garments that are not
covered in gold sequins. Thegarments from what we can tell
from the bits of fabricpreserved in the tombs were
white. They might have even beenbleached white. So you have to
imagine this brilliant whiterobe. There's even a possibility
(24:40):
that the fabric was burnished,so it would have been shiny. So
the fabric itself is light,bright, reflecting light. Then
you have the jewelry and theornaments on it. That's
reflecting light. And this is aquality, a divine quality of
radiance that we see even intexts described as being
imparted on the king. If thequeen is the king's partner,
(25:02):
she's really also carrying thattouched by the divine radiance.
So they are mortals, but they'rethe mortals most closely
connected to the divine. Theycarry this special
characteristic of radiance thatI think increases. It's like an
aura of their presence. Theirpresence extends beyond the
body.
And then you can think aboutwith multisensory consideration
(25:25):
how their presence could extendbeyond their body. Absolutely,
I'm sure you could hear themcoming down the hall, turning
the corner before you could seethem. You'd hear swooshing of
these layered and drapedgarments. You would hear the
tinkling of the jewelry,possibly the clanking of anklets
on shoes or something like that.
But you could hear them beforeyou could see them. When you
(25:47):
would see them, the closer theyget if they're perfumed, you
would be able to smell thatroyal presence.
Jon Taylor (25:56):
Hmmm. Does that imply then that there is a
status related set ofconventions about who can wear
jewelry and of how much jewelry,things like that, so that you
can't upstage the queen, say?
Amy Gansell (26:08):
Yeah, well, I don't know of any record like we have
in ancient Rome, about who canwear and how much jewelry or in
public. But absolutely, when youlook at the art, you can
differentiate who the queen isversus other royal women or
women who are ranked below andsurveying the royal couple, for
(26:28):
example. And I'm sure that to berecognised as the queen, one of
the criteria is that you are themost highly-adorned mortal woman
in Assyria.
Ellie Bennett (26:40):
And you mentioned as well that there are bits in
the dress that might point to aninternational life of these
women. How far can we take that?
So what does the dress of thesewomen indicate about their
lives?
Amy Gansell (26:54):
So I mean, you can push it as far as you want to.
But sticking within the evidencethat we have, there's, for
example, some fibulae. Those arelike the ancient safety pins to
pin the garment that were foundin one of the tombs. And
dangling off of them are severallittle scarabs. So carved stones
(27:15):
that look like beetles. It's anEgyptian symbol. They were also
produced in the Levant as anEgyptianising motif. Were these
Levantine or even Egyptian itemsthat were imported to Assyria?
That is a possibility, but thefibulae themselves -- this is
why I find this particularartifacts really interesting
(27:37):
--the fibulae are appearing tobe Assyrian style. So you have
the Assyrian empire, holding onto its periphery or its desired
edges of the world. And that istelling us a story of empire.
The story of empire might alsobe told through the queens
themselves. There has been a lotof research suggesting that at
(27:59):
least some of the queens were ofLevantine heritage. So that
would suggest they're bringingdowries in of non-Assyrian
objects. But there's a lot ofthis intercultural and broad
Near Eastern elite style ofjewelry that we find as well.
Wearing those items that areabsolutely Assyrian, but that
(28:19):
you could also wear in otherparts of the Near East. Again,
it just represents the breadth,the presence of the empire and
the presence of these women inthe world, not just in the
palace, not just in the Assyrianempire. You've got to think of
the Assyrian empire from theAssyrian point of view: that is
the world in its totality.
Jon Taylor (28:39):
Amy, you've just finished a book. So first of
all, congratulations on that.
What is this book about?
Amy Gansell (28:44):
Well, the book -- the title right now is The
Queens of Nimrud's NorthwestPalace: Beauty, Power and
Presence in the Neo-Assyrianworld. And the most important
words in that title are "beauty,power, and presence". So I
approach the queens as theepitome of feminine beauty, just
(29:07):
as the king would be the epitomeof male beauty, at least on
Earth; the mortal embodiment ofthe ideals of beauty. Power is
really important. These were notjust beautiful, helpless women.
These were agents of empire. Thequeens had administrative royal
(29:28):
roles. To be a queen was to beappointed to a royal position.
It wasn't just to be there.
Mostly they're mothers of theking and consort queens. But
they're not just women relatedto the king, they are women
enacting power in the palace, inthe empire.
And that brings us to that word"presence". They were present
(29:49):
fixtures. The queen was apresent fixture in the empire,
in the world, and I think thatshe would have been seen. She
would have been accessible. Herpresence in the palace would
have been palpable. We justtalked about what she looked
like. She would have been seen,heard, you might smell the aroma
of her perfume. She could sit ona throne, she had a throne room
(30:13):
in the palace, as I argue in thebook. So to be in the presence
of the queen for a member of thecourt, it would have been part
of royal life. But there mayhave been a desire among those
outside of the dailyadministration of the court to
see the queen, to bask in herpower, beauty, and presence that
(30:35):
I can't be certain of. But whenyou imagine her appearance in
this multi-sensory way, itwasn't somebody that was to be
hidden from sight or hidden fromthe world, it was somebody to be
presented.
Jon Taylor (30:50):
Interesting. Can I ask about beauty standards? When
you use the word beauty, arethere particular characteristics
or features or behaviours thatare deemed beautiful? Do we know
that?
Amy Gansell (31:01):
Okay, well, beauty in any culture is a very complex
construct. Its social, itscultural. And if we want to talk
about and investigate ancientAssyrian beauty, the first
challenge is that there is not aword for beauty, as we see it,
as kind of an umbrellaencapsulation. I started with
(31:24):
the textual record, at the startto look for descriptors of what
is ideal, and what isperfection. And those we can
find in descriptions of deities,as well as descriptions of the
king. And we can even look toaesthetics and descriptions of
(31:45):
ideal objects to get a notion ofwhat is a positively-coded
aspect of some presence. So whenwe work through this, there are
a lot of Akkadian terms that Ihave pulled together and that
others have worked on as well,that are encoding what I'm
interpreting, as a construct ofideal feminine beauty embodied
(32:09):
in the Neo-Assyrian queen.
I know that is a huge mouthful,and you're just curious of what
was a beautiful queen, what wasa beautiful woman supposed to
look like? Well, instead oflook, let's think of be like.
It's more than just visual. Andbeauty is something that's
internal as well as externallyexhibited. At least, as I'm
(32:31):
finding it in some of thesedescriptors that we have. So
radiance, something we alreadytalked about, would be an aspect
of beauty. Have this brilliant,lit-up presence. So we would
have radiane. You would havesymmetrical, well-proportioned
figure, as is also an aspect ofbeauty. And that relates to what
(32:54):
we find in art. It relates towhat we find in the
archaeological record with thejewelry, of everything always
been in pairs, equal on bothsides of the body. You want to
have, it's kind of a moreinternal and social
characteristic, perhaps a goodpedigree, a good upbringing,
that would be looked at as partof the formation of a beautiful
(33:16):
woman.
Some of these things also relateto a masculinity as well. You
will have a vitality, vivacityand lifefulness about you. And
even in death that could beextended and represented through
that jewelry that is showingblossoming flowers and fruiting
(33:39):
plants and things like that. Sothe vitality of the presence.
There are many sub-categoriesthat start to overlap in some of
their aspects and connotations.
So, sexuality and fertilitystart to come up and get cued
through different terms indifferent contexts in which
(33:59):
they're used. So in terms ofsexuality, I mean being a sexual
person. In terms of fertility,being associated with fertility.
And none of these aspects ofbeauty mean that say you could
be a barren woman, butrepresent, put forth the image
of fertility and it's bothbiological fertility and as a
(34:21):
body of empire and agent ofempire, the queen is putting
forth the ideal of fecundity ofthe land. That's also part of
the whole empire's standard andideal. You're embodying these
great, broad ideals, and that'spart of the beauty. What would a
queen look like? I like to justsay she would be meant to look
(34:45):
like a goddess. She's meant tolook like the utter perfection
of femininity embodied in ahuman presence.
Jon Taylor (34:55):
Yeah, that's fantastic. I wonder a bit if the
slightly constrictive dressplays a role in your court
ceremonies. You're the queen,and you're brought out on this
formal, very boring, longreception where you have to sit
there, and if that constricteddress is part of it, or if it
helps you not get backache orsomething like that? Those kind
of formal aspects.
Amy Gansell (35:15):
Yeah, it very well might be, because having an
upright posture was an ideal formen and women. The person coming
to visit the empire from outsideof Assyria would be groveling,
or you see a captive withstooped posture. So having this
very erect posture, which I eventried to replicate when I was
(35:37):
wearing it, was veryuncomfortable. Not standing in a
relaxed stance, but trying to bevery upright like we see it in
the images. But if the garmentis holding you in place, you can
feel it, reminding you to standup, and to keep those hemlines
exactly parallel, that reallymight have reinforced this ideal
(35:59):
posture.
Ellie Bennett (36:01):
It's something that I in my spare time do
ridiculous attempts ofrecreating medieval garments.
But it reminds me of a lot ofthe stuff that I've tried to do,
and it seems like a recurringthing. The more restrictive or
the harder to wear something is,the higher up in status you are.
As you were talking about thedraping and making sure all the
hemlines and all the creaseswere kept in place and thinking
(36:24):
of the wedding saris in Indiaand of the Roman togas and
things where you have to standin one place to show off just
how little you have to do inlife, just to get by.
Amy Gansell (36:35):
Yeah, I also have a hunch ... I could be wrong ...
but if their ideals are the godsand goddesses. They're used to
seeing cult statues that arecarved and standing perfectly
still and upright. So it mightbe emulating that posture that
they would see in the cultstatue too.
Jon Taylor (36:56):
Hmm. Wow, wow, wow.
This is fascinating. Can youremind us please, what is your
book called, and when is it dueout?
Amy Gansell (37:04):
The book right now is called The Queen's of
N (37:07):
Beauty, Power and Presence in the Neo-Assyrian world. And I
think I need to add the dates,because the public might not
know this is about circa 866 to705 BCE. I would love to start
the title off as Beauty, powerand presence, but again, you'd
have to read through the titleto find out whose beauty power
and presence that is. When is itdue out and with whom? It's with
(37:29):
Oxford University Press. Andhopefully it will be out at the
end of 2024 or early on tocelebrate the beginning of 2025.
Jon Taylor (37:41):
We're very much looking forward to that. Is
there anything else that weshould have asked you?
Amy Gansell (37:46):
One thing I want to mention is sometimes the
archaeological finds, it's notthat they differ from what we
see in artistic representations,but they give us more
information. And one of thoseareas of more information is the
material and especially thecolour. So we can finally see
the art that's preserved haslost its colour, especially
(38:08):
stone carvings like gray or tan.
And we have this reallywashed-out image. It's like
looking at black and whitephotos of the past. But the past
was a time of vivid colours. Sowe can see from the types of
stones that they're using andthe metal, mostly gold, and the
stones are banded agate, whichis a dark brownish and black
combined with white material;carnelian, which is a reddish
(38:30):
orange colour, and lapis lazuli,which is sparkly, deep blue
colour.
So you think of a red, orange,brown, black, white, blue, and
gold colour scheme. I thinkthese would have been recognised
as imperial colours. And justlike we recognise today, the
(38:51):
colours of a national flag or asoccer team, when you see that
colour combination flashing,coming towards you, that is the
colour combination worn by anAssyrian royal. So I just like
to emphasise that we need to tryto translate in our brains when
we're looking at the evidenceinto this brilliant polychrome
(39:14):
presence.
Jon Taylor (39:16):
Thank you very much indeed.
Amy Gansell (39:18):
You're welcome.
Jon Taylor (39:20):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
Jiménez, Jana Matuszak, NancyHighcock, Jay C, Rune
Rattenborg, Woodthrush, ElisaRossberger, Mark Weeden, Jordi
Mon Companys, Thomas Bolin, JoanPorter MacIver, John MacGinnis,
(39:40):
Andrew George, Yelena Rakic,Zach Rubin, Sabina Franke, Shai
Gordin, Aaron Macks, MaarjaSeire, Jaafar Jotheri, Morgan
Hite, Chikako Watanabe, MarkMcElwaine, Jonathan Blanchard
Smith, Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
(40:05):
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
(40:27):
Jackson, Susannah Paulus, EricWhitacre, Jakob Flygare, Jon
Ganuza, as well as those whoprefer to remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
(40:50):
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
(41:13):
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
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you’ll join us next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Early excavations often targetedthe ruined palaces of ancient
(00:36):
Iraq. Among the carved reliefsdecorating the walls of
Assyria's palaces weredepictions of the king and his
courtiers; one also depicts aqueen. More than 100 years
later, excavations revealedastonishing new evidence: the
bodies of some of the queensthemselves, with their jewels
(00:57):
and fragments of the clothessuggested by the reliefs.
Despite their near absence fromlarge-scale palace art, the
queens would have been importantfigures at court. They would
have made an unforgettableimpression around the palace. As
with so much of courtparaphernalia, the royal figure
conveyed all sorts of messages.
What would the queens wear, andwhat did it mean? Dress was
(01:20):
primarily visual, but othersenses were invoked as well.
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
(01:46):
let's meet today's guest.
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us.
Amy Gansell (02:00):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jon Taylor (02:02):
Can you tell us please
you do?
Amy Gansell (02:06):
I'm Amy Gansell.
I'm an art history professor atSt. John's University in New
York City. I'm also thecoordinator for our Women's
Gender and Sexuality Studiesprogram here. And I specialise
in studying the ancient Assyrianqueens. So, women and their
representations in art andarchaeology in the ancient Near
East, broadly.
Jon Taylor (02:27):
Okay, thank you. And today we are going to talk about
the Assyrian queens and dress.
First of all, how do we actuallyknow about dress at all? Women's
dress or Assyrian queenly dress?
Textiles tend not to survive, dothey? What sources do we have
for this topic?
Amy Gansell (02:45):
Well, we actually have a good deal of evidence
about ancient textiles andclothing if we put together a
lot of different resources.
There is some archaeologicalevidence, particularly from
Nimrud. From inside the queens'coffins, there have been some
fragments, little bits oftextiles, preserved that have
been analysed and tested todetermine that they were
(03:06):
primarily linen textiles thatwere used for presumably for
their clothing, but also maybeas shrouds to wrap their dressed
bodies in. In addition to that,there is textual evidence that
refers to types of fabric,treatments of fabrics such as
dyes and bleaching, as well asdifferent types of garments.
(03:27):
And then of course, we have theart historical record. Now, it's
difficult to match up some ofthe texts, the ancient
terminology that we have, towhat we find in the
archaeological record or thevisual record, because
obviously, nothing comes with alabel. But we do have a lot of
examples, especially in thevisual arts. We know from
(03:50):
looking at images in art thatroyal garments were draped and
belted and that's something I'llget back to in a moment. We also
know that royal clothing washighly decorated, especially
with imagery that's evokingflowers, maybe trees. In some of
the images of kings, we see morecomplex narrative scenes that
(04:11):
relate to those that are knownto us from large-scale Assyrian
art (04:15):
scenes of hunt, war, and ritual.
So going back to the aspect ofthe garments being draped and
belted, how do we know aboutroyal clothing? Well, if we put
the ancient evidence togetherand we apply it, we can attempt
to reconstruct based on what ispreserved what an actual garment
(04:35):
might have looked like. And I indoing so worked with a costume
designer and scholar of theancient Near East, Elizabeth
Clancy. And we used fabric anddraped according to matching up
what we saw in art, and she wasable to discover the manner in
which a queen's garment wouldhave been draped in 360 degrees.
(04:59):
The problem with art is itusually just shows a profile
view. So we're kind ofstruggling to imagine what the
entire living dressed body wouldhave looked like. But these
contemporary reconstructionefforts are taking us there too.
Jon Taylor (05:13):
Brilliant, thank you. As you were saying that, I
realised there's an obviousquestion I missed off, which is
about experimentalarchaeological approach.
Amy Gansell (05:20):
Yeah.
Jon Taylor (05:20):
What did you learn from doing it in the physical
world, recreating these things?
What did that teach you that youcouldn't learn from iconography,
say?
Amy Gansell (05:28):
Certainly, it taught us what the garment look
like in 360 degrees. It givesyou a sense. I even got to be a
model, to attempt to wear agarment that she draped on me.
It gives you a sense of how itwould feel to be in a draped
garment. It's both andrestrictive compared to what
we're used to in modernclothing, but it's also very
(05:50):
flexible and flowing with thefabric. We also observed that
the way the garment falls whenyou just comfortably sit down in
a chair is not what it lookslike in art. But if you
carefully bunch up the hem andtuck it underneath you, and sit
there perfectly still, you canrecreate the same garment lines,
(06:12):
and hemlines, and drapery linesthat we see in art. So prior to
this experiment, we kind ofassumed that what we saw in art
was an idealised image. Maybethe garment could not possibly
fall in that manner. But we doknow now that just like in
modern fashion photography, ifyou pose something very
(06:33):
carefully, you can achieve thatideal appearance.
Ellie Bennett (06:37):
I love that idea of idealism versus the real
element, and especially theexperience. I'm sure I've told
you that I really think thateveryone should try wearing what
people are wearing inrepresentations of the ancient
world. I wanted to very quicklyask you: when you were going
through the different sourcesthat you have available, I think
most assyriologists are fairlyfamiliar with the texts, and
(06:59):
those doing new Assyrian historyare quite familiar with the huge
images in the palaces. But couldyou give us a quick introduction
to the tombs of the queens?
That's a really unique set ofsources.
Amy Gansell (07:12):
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And the tombs are
the most recently discoveredpiece of the puzzle here. They
were discovered in the late1980s, 1988/1989, into the early
90s, in Iraq at the city ofNimrud, which is near Mosul
today. They were originallypublished in the late 90s, and
(07:33):
in a catalogue in 2000. But theydidn't gain as much
international attention as faras the breadth of their
archaeological material. Becausethe catalogue was published in
Arabic. There were very, veryfew copies of that catalogue
available. And the otherpublications that came out,
there was even in some popularmagazines, news articles that
(07:57):
came out, but they wouldhighlight one or two, or maybe a
dozen treasure artifacts. Theydidn't really give us a sense of
what the artifacts of dress fromhead to toe would have entailed,
let alone the consistency withwhich we were finding these
elements of dress across thedifferent burials of these royal
(08:19):
women. I started working on themin the early 2000s, when not
much was published. And they'regaining more and more attention
and being more integrated intoour research, not just on dress,
but on royal culture overall.
Ellie Bennett (08:35):
I have a quick question as well about do you
have a sense of any differencebetween what these women were
wearing in the burials to whatthey represented in the images?
Amy Gansell (08:49):
Well, we're dealing with a very fragmentary record,
especially with the images. Sothe large scale detailed images
that we have of queenly dressdate to the seventh century. And
the material that we have fromthe tomb dates earlier to
probably the ninth and eighthcentury. So it's hard to
(09:12):
correlate. You know, what we seeis not what we get in these
tombs. But if you look back atwhat people were buried in, in
the 1800s, and what we'redepicted in today, it's not
gonna match up either. So wecan't just assume that their
images and their burial dresswere different for some cultural
reason at that moment. But wealso can tell there's lots that
(09:38):
was found in the tomb, lots ofartifacts that are not depicted
in art. I can get into that inmore detail and tell you more
about what the tombs reveal tous that is not preserved in any
other record if you want.
Jon Taylor (09:50):
Yes, please. I think that might be a good time to do
it. There is this other questionon a very basic level: what
would a queen actually wear?
Amy Gansell (09:59):
Sure, let do an overview of what a queen would
actually wear. And I do believethat these queens were wearing
these ensembles, these royalensembles, in life as well as in
death. That it wasn't just aspecial costume for the
afterlife, or for a funeral orburial. That what we find in the
tombs is indicative of what theysat on the throne in, in the
(10:23):
palace in life. So, startingfrom that top, you would have a
diadem and also crown, soheadgear. It seems that some of
the queens were buried withmultiple options for what to
wear on their head. So it seemsthat perhaps for different
occasions or different contexts,different headgear was worn.
There's a type of diadem that'sconsistently found across
(10:46):
multiple of these tombs. So thatseems to be kind of the standard
base diadem for a top-rankedroyal woman, i.e. the queen. And
then these elaborate crowns,each of which is unique that
have been found in the tombsmight have differentiated them
on an individual level. But justto have one of those crowns
(11:06):
would have been a queenly crown,in addition to the diadem. But
it seems to be worn separately.
You couldn't put a crown overthe diadem necessarily. You'd
cover up your diadem. So movingon down, the crown sits on the
hair. So some of the diametersof the crowns and diadems are
quite wide. They're wider thanmost women's heads.
(11:27):
Significantly wider. So itsuggests that the queens had
very poofy hair. They might havebeen styling it. They might
though, have padded theirhairstyles out with hair pieces
or were wearing wigs. So thehair is something that I really
consider as part of the dress ofwhat a queen would wear.
(11:50):
And then of course, we have thejewelry ensemble. Starting on
the top, you would have a pairof earrings, so an earring in
each ear. You would havenecklace or necklaces. There are
also a lot of beads found in thetomb. So they may have had long
strings of beads as it's beenreconstructed by archaeologists.
But it's possible that some ofthe beads were beading on
(12:12):
garments or wraps that thequeens were wearing. Then, of
course they had that garment,the draped garment. The garment
itself might have beenornamented or it was definitely
ornamented, but it might havebeen ornamented with embroidery
and or with little metalmedallions. It's like the
sequins of ancient time. We havegold medallions, very thin, but
(12:36):
they have attachments on theback like a loop that you could
sew onto a garment. Or some ofthem have holes, like
buttonholes that you could sewthem on with. And that would
have covered the garment. Interms of the embroidery, some of
the tufts of fabric that Imentioned earlier, have evidence
-- it's been microscopicallyexamined -- that looks like it
(12:58):
may have been partlyembroidered. So that's another
form of decoration on thegarment surface. They also had
tassels and fringes on thegarments. So all of that is
creating motion and brillianceadding to the body.
Moving on down from the torsocovering, there's some artifacts
(13:18):
that we don't know how they wereworn. I think they might have
been draped over the shoulders.
I call them body ornaments, butwe don't have any depictions and
in to explain what they were.
Then you would have braceletsworn in pairs; one on each, at
least one on each wrist. And youwould have that matched with
anklets. Again, worn in pairs.
And the anklets, they're ribbedand quite high. And if you just
(13:41):
see an image of it in art, youmight think they're wearing a
stack of half a dozen bangles ontheir ankles. But these are cuff
bracelets made of metal thathave the ridges that suggest
that they're wearing a stack ofindividual anklets. They had
also rings, and rings come insets of 10. So you would have a
(14:02):
ring on every finger. It'ssymmetrical, but covering every
finger with a ring. There's evena tiny set of 10 rings that are
child's size. And they havechains that attach them to a
bracelet. It's almost as if itwas training to get a young
royal child used to wearingrings on all their fingers, but
(14:24):
they wouldn't be able to playwith them and take them off or
possibly lose them.
Jon Taylor (14:28):
Hmm. Do you think these features are female
centered? Are they royalcentered? Or royal females? What
Amy Gansell (14:36):
Well, I think that they are royal centered. They're
does it symbolise?
emblems of empire. And part ofwhat's the imagery when we start
looking at at the jewelry, ithas images of trees, of flowers,
a lot of pomegranate show up.
You see that same kind of motifshowing up in the decoration
(14:58):
inside the palace. And asdepicted on the garments and
objects associated with theking. So it's kind of a shared
iconography, a shared image ofempire that the queen is
participating in. I think that'sreally important, because she's
partaking in this imagery. It'snot just what queens where. It's
(15:21):
what empire wears. It's whatempire is. It produces her as
part of the matrix of thepalace; part of the matrix of
the empire, and on par as apartner to the king.
Now, within the ensemble of whatthey're wearing, queens are
wearing a different head dressthan the king, because you need
(15:43):
to be able to recognise them,immediately announcing rank.
This is the king. This is thequeen. The crown prince would
also have his own specialisedhead dress. And then in terms of
the types of jewelry worn, thereseem to be some earring forms
that have pendants that arehanging down; just a singular
(16:04):
cylindrical kind of pendant.
That seems to be associated morewith men and eunuchs in the
court. And we don't have anyexamples of that showing up
depicted on queens or in theirtombs. Whereas the queens'
earrings are morecrescent-shaped, with tiny
pendants that might dangle downoff of them almost like a
fringe. So there's somegendering, I think, in the
(16:26):
design of the types of jewelry.
Also men and eunuchs also werewearing cuffs on the tops of
their arms to show off, or toenhance the appearance of their
biceps. And women's musculature,for ideals of femininity was not
something that was emphasised.
The female body was verysmoothly presented, and not
(16:48):
defined in terms of musculature.
So you don't have something in aclamping around the bicep like
you see in the other genders,but she would have the bracelets
on her wrists. Those are justsome examples.
Ellie Bennett (17:03):
So were these items of dress the same across
the board? Or is there any hintof individual or personal choice
in the dress of the queens?
Amy Gansell (17:13):
That is a great question. And there is actually
a lot of difference within thesets of jewelry that were found
in the tombs. So overall, therewas an ensemble, that seems like
it was followed according toconvention. Just that what I
described from head to toe thata queen would wear. That is
(17:36):
queenly dress. But within thatensemble, there looks like
there's significant variationfrom queen to queen. And even
just like in our own lives foran individual, perhaps on a
day-to-day basis, or, at leastaccording to context and
ceremony and events, you wearsomething different. I speak of
(17:58):
these variations, because therewill be when we look in the
tombs, in the coffins, there aremany, many more pieces of
jewelry, than could possibly beworn at once. And it looks like
it's the queen's collection ofjewelry that is being buried
with her. So one day she mighthave chosen to wear one necklace
(18:20):
versus another.
We also have a sense that whilethere are some very standard
pieces, they might haverepresented, you know, like a
particular type of bracelet, forexample, that is found in two
different coffins. Two differentqueens had the same type of
bracelets. Oh, they're slightlydifferent sizes, so they were
probably scaled to theindividual wrist size. That
(18:44):
might have been a fashion of thetime. It doesn't necessarily
mean that every queen had towear a bracelet of exactly this
type. That might have been adesirable type of bracelet that
the elite women were wearing atthat time.
But then we also find totallyunique pieces of jewelry in the
different coffins. Now it'spossible because we only have a
(19:06):
little snapshot through thearchaeological evidence of what
is preserved. There's possiblethat there's 10 other bracelets
of these types I'm callingunique, but they don't survive.
They're not known to us yet. Butfrom what we can tell
archaeologically, we have theseindividual bracelets that have
maybe unique imagery, uniquedesigns. And it brings up a lot
of questions that I can'tanswer, but I'd like to
highlight (19:29):
could the queens have been personally commissioning
pieces of unique jewelry forthemselves? Were there jewelry
designers that were makingjewelry specifically for
individual queens to serve theirindividual taste or their
individual needs? And thoseneeds might have been
ceremonial, imperial, ritual,etc.
(19:52):
Some of the jewelry also that wesee as unique, it might have
come as part of a queen's dowry.
She might have brought it fromher birth family and in some
cases from the homeland of herbirth. So it might have been
coming from outside of Assyria.
There's kind of an internationalelite culture of jewelry. So
it's hard to pinpoint the originnecessarily of an earring or
(20:14):
bracelet type. But it may bethat some of this stuff is
entering into the Assyrian courtand looking unique to us. And it
would have really been showingoff her heritage or showing off
a family heirloom that wasspecial for her. So again,
within what is kind of astandard royal Assyrian kit of
(20:35):
queenly dress, there seems tohave been lots of variation,
queen to queen and perhapspersonal choice on a day-to-day
or event-to-event basis for eachqueen. What I would love to know
is, who dressed the queens whenthey were buried? And how do
they decide which of these itemsof jewelry to put on their
(20:57):
bodies?
Jon Taylor (20:58):
Hmm, I was just wondering, do you think there's
a formalised burialwear thatyou're expected to put on at
that point, rather than thatrepresenting what you'd
ordinarily wear on courtappearances or, you know, behind
the scenes?
Amy Gansell (21:11):
So there very well maybe, and that is something
that we don't have the evidenceto tell yet. If there is, it
would, at least I think beritual dress that they're being
buried in. Because this is agreat ritual process that's
taking place in the tombs.
They're also preparing to gointo the afterlife to live
eternally as royals. So theyneed to be dressed in a
(21:34):
recognisable way as a queen. ButI think it would be a queen in
ritual. But we don't have enoughcomparison to really put our
finger on what the dressensembles meant for sure that
they were buried in. But I wouldhazard a guess that they're in
their ritual dress.
Ellie Bennett (21:54):
I also really like your idea of there being an
internal economy in the palacefor just creating things just
for the queen to wear. Howlikely do you think that is? Is
there any record of jewelrymakers and textile workers in
the palace?
Amy Gansell (22:10):
There are definitely royal textile workers
and jewelry producers. However,we don't know if they were
working specifically for thequeen. We don't know if they're
just carrying out some imperialtemplate. Or if there are
individual requests for whatshould be made. There's also a
(22:31):
hairdresser that worked in thepalace that would serve the
queen and a perfume maker forthe palace as well. And all of
that, again, it's part of themultisensory aspect of the
queen's dress.
Ellie Bennett (22:44):
Do you think that is something that you could come
back to in experimental things,like this perfumery. I'd love to
hear your thoughts on whetheryou think we could recreate the
smell of being a queen.
Amy Gansell (22:54):
Ooh, that is very intriguing and tempting to
explore. So I would have to lookat some publications on the
perfumes and I don't know ifthey include recipes or
descriptions of the scent. Butif they do, that would be a
place to start. If they do not,we'd have to get very
(23:16):
experimental. And perhaps lookat the types of fruits and
floral imagery that is beingworn in their jewelry, in the
queen's dress and see, well,might she have been meant to
exude an aroma of these fruitsand flowers that she's wearing
on her body too?
Jon Taylor (23:35):
Interesting. Perhaps you could say something else
about the other senses? BecauseI think you mention, don't you,
that there was adornments on thequeenly clothing, and do you not
suggest that perhaps that gaveher a kind of visible presence,
a kind of sparkle? Or could youhear a coming as she comes down
the corridor and she has allthese jewels banging around? Is
there a multi-sensory queenlypresence that's being created
(23:56):
with dress?
Amy Gansell (23:57):
There absolutely is. The queen, like the king,
would have been presented aslarger than life, I think, just
from the example of theseoutsized headdresses and the
hairstyles and the gleam, theradiance that is bouncing off of
(24:18):
their bodies from head to toe,especially with these decorated
garments and even the parts ofthe garments that are not
covered in gold sequins. Thegarments from what we can tell
from the bits of fabricpreserved in the tombs were
white. They might have even beenbleached white. So you have to
imagine this brilliant whiterobe. There's even a possibility
(24:40):
that the fabric was burnished,so it would have been shiny. So
the fabric itself is light,bright, reflecting light. Then
you have the jewelry and theornaments on it. That's
reflecting light. And this is aquality, a divine quality of
radiance that we see even intexts described as being
imparted on the king. If thequeen is the king's partner,
(25:02):
she's really also carrying thattouched by the divine radiance.
So they are mortals, but they'rethe mortals most closely
connected to the divine. Theycarry this special
characteristic of radiance thatI think increases. It's like an
aura of their presence. Theirpresence extends beyond the
body.
And then you can think aboutwith multisensory consideration
(25:25):
how their presence could extendbeyond their body. Absolutely,
I'm sure you could hear themcoming down the hall, turning
the corner before you could seethem. You'd hear swooshing of
these layered and drapedgarments. You would hear the
tinkling of the jewelry,possibly the clanking of anklets
on shoes or something like that.
But you could hear them beforeyou could see them. When you
(25:47):
would see them, the closer theyget if they're perfumed, you
would be able to smell thatroyal presence.
Jon Taylor (25:56):
Hmmm. Does that imply then that there is a
status related set ofconventions about who can wear
jewelry and of how much jewelry,things like that, so that you
can't upstage the queen, say?
Amy Gansell (26:08):
Yeah, well, I don't know of any record like we have
in ancient Rome, about who canwear and how much jewelry or in
public. But absolutely, when youlook at the art, you can
differentiate who the queen isversus other royal women or
women who are ranked below andsurveying the royal couple, for
(26:28):
example. And I'm sure that to berecognised as the queen, one of
the criteria is that you are themost highly-adorned mortal woman
in Assyria.
Ellie Bennett (26:40):
And you mentioned as well that there are bits in
the dress that might point to aninternational life of these
women. How far can we take that?
So what does the dress of thesewomen indicate about their
lives?
Amy Gansell (26:54):
So I mean, you can push it as far as you want to.
But sticking within the evidencethat we have, there's, for
example, some fibulae. Those arelike the ancient safety pins to
pin the garment that were foundin one of the tombs. And
dangling off of them are severallittle scarabs. So carved stones
(27:15):
that look like beetles. It's anEgyptian symbol. They were also
produced in the Levant as anEgyptianising motif. Were these
Levantine or even Egyptian itemsthat were imported to Assyria?
That is a possibility, but thefibulae themselves -- this is
why I find this particularartifacts really interesting
(27:37):
--the fibulae are appearing tobe Assyrian style. So you have
the Assyrian empire, holding onto its periphery or its desired
edges of the world. And that istelling us a story of empire.
The story of empire might alsobe told through the queens
themselves. There has been a lotof research suggesting that at
(27:59):
least some of the queens were ofLevantine heritage. So that
would suggest they're bringingdowries in of non-Assyrian
objects. But there's a lot ofthis intercultural and broad
Near Eastern elite style ofjewelry that we find as well.
Wearing those items that areabsolutely Assyrian, but that
(28:19):
you could also wear in otherparts of the Near East. Again,
it just represents the breadth,the presence of the empire and
the presence of these women inthe world, not just in the
palace, not just in the Assyrianempire. You've got to think of
the Assyrian empire from theAssyrian point of view: that is
the world in its totality.
Jon Taylor (28:39):
Amy, you've just finished a book. So first of
all, congratulations on that.
What is this book about?
Amy Gansell (28:44):
Well, the book -- the title right now is The
Queens of Nimrud's NorthwestPalace: Beauty, Power and
Presence in the Neo-Assyrianworld. And the most important
words in that title are "beauty,power, and presence". So I
approach the queens as theepitome of feminine beauty, just
(29:07):
as the king would be the epitomeof male beauty, at least on
Earth; the mortal embodiment ofthe ideals of beauty. Power is
really important. These were notjust beautiful, helpless women.
These were agents of empire. Thequeens had administrative royal
(29:28):
roles. To be a queen was to beappointed to a royal position.
It wasn't just to be there.
Mostly they're mothers of theking and consort queens. But
they're not just women relatedto the king, they are women
enacting power in the palace, inthe empire.
And that brings us to that word"presence". They were present
(29:49):
fixtures. The queen was apresent fixture in the empire,
in the world, and I think thatshe would have been seen. She
would have been accessible. Herpresence in the palace would
have been palpable. We justtalked about what she looked
like. She would have been seen,heard, you might smell the aroma
of her perfume. She could sit ona throne, she had a throne room
(30:13):
in the palace, as I argue in thebook. So to be in the presence
of the queen for a member of thecourt, it would have been part
of royal life. But there mayhave been a desire among those
outside of the dailyadministration of the court to
see the queen, to bask in herpower, beauty, and presence that
(30:35):
I can't be certain of. But whenyou imagine her appearance in
this multi-sensory way, itwasn't somebody that was to be
hidden from sight or hidden fromthe world, it was somebody to be
presented.
Jon Taylor (30:50):
Interesting. Can I ask about beauty standards? When
you use the word beauty, arethere particular characteristics
or features or behaviours thatare deemed beautiful? Do we know
that?
Amy Gansell (31:01):
Okay, well, beauty in any culture is a very complex
construct. Its social, itscultural. And if we want to talk
about and investigate ancientAssyrian beauty, the first
challenge is that there is not aword for beauty, as we see it,
as kind of an umbrellaencapsulation. I started with
(31:24):
the textual record, at the startto look for descriptors of what
is ideal, and what isperfection. And those we can
find in descriptions of deities,as well as descriptions of the
king. And we can even look toaesthetics and descriptions of
(31:45):
ideal objects to get a notion ofwhat is a positively-coded
aspect of some presence. So whenwe work through this, there are
a lot of Akkadian terms that Ihave pulled together and that
others have worked on as well,that are encoding what I'm
interpreting, as a construct ofideal feminine beauty embodied
(32:09):
in the Neo-Assyrian queen.
I know that is a huge mouthful,and you're just curious of what
was a beautiful queen, what wasa beautiful woman supposed to
look like? Well, instead oflook, let's think of be like.
It's more than just visual. Andbeauty is something that's
internal as well as externallyexhibited. At least, as I'm
(32:31):
finding it in some of thesedescriptors that we have. So
radiance, something we alreadytalked about, would be an aspect
of beauty. Have this brilliant,lit-up presence. So we would
have radiane. You would havesymmetrical, well-proportioned
figure, as is also an aspect ofbeauty. And that relates to what
(32:54):
we find in art. It relates towhat we find in the
archaeological record with thejewelry, of everything always
been in pairs, equal on bothsides of the body. You want to
have, it's kind of a moreinternal and social
characteristic, perhaps a goodpedigree, a good upbringing,
that would be looked at as partof the formation of a beautiful
(33:16):
woman.
Some of these things also relateto a masculinity as well. You
will have a vitality, vivacityand lifefulness about you. And
even in death that could beextended and represented through
that jewelry that is showingblossoming flowers and fruiting
(33:39):
plants and things like that. Sothe vitality of the presence.
There are many sub-categoriesthat start to overlap in some of
their aspects and connotations.
So, sexuality and fertilitystart to come up and get cued
through different terms indifferent contexts in which
(33:59):
they're used. So in terms ofsexuality, I mean being a sexual
person. In terms of fertility,being associated with fertility.
And none of these aspects ofbeauty mean that say you could
be a barren woman, butrepresent, put forth the image
of fertility and it's bothbiological fertility and as a
(34:21):
body of empire and agent ofempire, the queen is putting
forth the ideal of fecundity ofthe land. That's also part of
the whole empire's standard andideal. You're embodying these
great, broad ideals, and that'spart of the beauty. What would a
queen look like? I like to justsay she would be meant to look
(34:45):
like a goddess. She's meant tolook like the utter perfection
of femininity embodied in ahuman presence.
Jon Taylor (34:55):
Yeah, that's fantastic. I wonder a bit if the
slightly constrictive dressplays a role in your court
ceremonies. You're the queen,and you're brought out on this
formal, very boring, longreception where you have to sit
there, and if that constricteddress is part of it, or if it
helps you not get backache orsomething like that? Those kind
of formal aspects.
Amy Gansell (35:15):
Yeah, it very well might be, because having an
upright posture was an ideal formen and women. The person coming
to visit the empire from outsideof Assyria would be groveling,
or you see a captive withstooped posture. So having this
very erect posture, which I eventried to replicate when I was
(35:37):
wearing it, was veryuncomfortable. Not standing in a
relaxed stance, but trying to bevery upright like we see it in
the images. But if the garmentis holding you in place, you can
feel it, reminding you to standup, and to keep those hemlines
exactly parallel, that reallymight have reinforced this ideal
(35:59):
posture.
Ellie Bennett (36:01):
It's something that I in my spare time do
ridiculous attempts ofrecreating medieval garments.
But it reminds me of a lot ofthe stuff that I've tried to do,
and it seems like a recurringthing. The more restrictive or
the harder to wear something is,the higher up in status you are.
As you were talking about thedraping and making sure all the
hemlines and all the creaseswere kept in place and thinking
(36:24):
of the wedding saris in Indiaand of the Roman togas and
things where you have to standin one place to show off just
how little you have to do inlife, just to get by.
Amy Gansell (36:35):
Yeah, I also have a hunch ... I could be wrong ...
but if their ideals are the godsand goddesses. They're used to
seeing cult statues that arecarved and standing perfectly
still and upright. So it mightbe emulating that posture that
they would see in the cultstatue too.
Jon Taylor (36:56):
Hmm. Wow, wow, wow.
This is fascinating. Can youremind us please, what is your
book called, and when is it dueout?
Amy Gansell (37:04):
The book right now is called The Queen's of
N (37:07):
Beauty, Power and Presence in the Neo-Assyrian world. And I
think I need to add the dates,because the public might not
know this is about circa 866 to705 BCE. I would love to start
the title off as Beauty, powerand presence, but again, you'd
have to read through the titleto find out whose beauty power
and presence that is. When is itdue out and with whom? It's with
(37:29):
Oxford University Press. Andhopefully it will be out at the
end of 2024 or early on tocelebrate the beginning of 2025.
Jon Taylor (37:41):
We're very much looking forward to that. Is
there anything else that weshould have asked you?
Amy Gansell (37:46):
One thing I want to mention is sometimes the
archaeological finds, it's notthat they differ from what we
see in artistic representations,but they give us more
information. And one of thoseareas of more information is the
material and especially thecolour. So we can finally see
the art that's preserved haslost its colour, especially
(38:08):
stone carvings like gray or tan.
And we have this reallywashed-out image. It's like
looking at black and whitephotos of the past. But the past
was a time of vivid colours. Sowe can see from the types of
stones that they're using andthe metal, mostly gold, and the
stones are banded agate, whichis a dark brownish and black
combined with white material;carnelian, which is a reddish
(38:30):
orange colour, and lapis lazuli,which is sparkly, deep blue
colour.
So you think of a red, orange,brown, black, white, blue, and
gold colour scheme. I thinkthese would have been recognised
as imperial colours. And justlike we recognise today, the
(38:51):
colours of a national flag or asoccer team, when you see that
colour combination flashing,coming towards you, that is the
colour combination worn by anAssyrian royal. So I just like
to emphasise that we need to tryto translate in our brains when
we're looking at the evidenceinto this brilliant polychrome
(39:14):
presence.
Jon Taylor (39:16):
Thank you very much indeed.
Amy Gansell (39:18):
You're welcome.
Jon Taylor (39:20):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
Jiménez, Jana Matuszak, NancyHighcock, Jay C, Rune
Rattenborg, Woodthrush, ElisaRossberger, Mark Weeden, Jordi
Mon Companys, Thomas Bolin, JoanPorter MacIver, John MacGinnis,
(39:40):
Andrew George, Yelena Rakic,Zach Rubin, Sabina Franke, Shai
Gordin, Aaron Macks, MaarjaSeire, Jaafar Jotheri, Morgan
Hite, Chikako Watanabe, MarkMcElwaine, Jonathan Blanchard
Smith, Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
(40:05):
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
(40:27):
Jackson, Susannah Paulus, EricWhitacre, Jakob Flygare, Jon
Ganuza, as well as those whoprefer to remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
(40:50):
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
(41:13):
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
(41:38):
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@wedge_pod. If you want the latest podcast news, you can
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you’ll join us next time.
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