Samsi, “Queen of the Arabs”, and Her Fight Against Assyria
November 2024 | Vol. 12.11
By Ellie Bennett
In the royal inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BCE) is a detailed passage describing the defeat of a foreign ruler. It reads just like every other description of an Assyrian king defeating an enemy: a description of how desolate the land is, a short phrase saying the enemy was destroyed, a detailed explanation of the aftermath of the battle, and finally the foreign ruler surrendering and sending gifts to their new ruler. What sets this passage apart is the gender of the ruler: Samsi is not a king, but has the title šarrat aribī — “Queen of the Arabs”.
Samsi was not the only woman with this title in the royal inscriptions — in total, five women are called “Queen of the Arabs”. One was imposed as ruler of the Arabs by the Assyrian king, and two more were queens of cities along the Persian Gulf in the Arabian Peninsula. These women are described as sending tribute to Assyria, leading armies, and in one instance there is a suggestion that they had a prominent religious role in their community.
These women have so far been a passing footnote in Neo-Assyrian history, but are the subject of my recent book The Queens of the Arabs During the Neo-Assyrian Period. One of my goals was to raise the profile of these fascinating women, whilst also interrogating how the Assyrians’ understanding of Arabian cultures changed over time.
For this contribution to ANE Today, I wanted to introduce readers to my favourite “Queen of the Arabs”: Samsi.
Battle with Assyria
Samsi is the second woman with the title šarrat aribī in Assyrian texts. She is mentioned in several copies of a royal inscription which was originally carved on the walls of Tiglath-Pileser III’s palace:
As for Samsi, queen of the Arabs, at Mount Saqurri, [I] de[feated 9,400 (of her people)]. I took away (from her) 1,000 people, 30,000 camels, 20,000 oxen, [...] ..., 5,000 (pouches) of all types of aromatics, ...,94 thrones of her gods, [the military equipment (and) staffs of her goddess(es)], (and) her property.
Moreover, she, in order to save her life, [... (and) set out] like a female onager [to the de]sert, a place (where one is always) thirsty. [I set the rest of her possessions] (and) her [ten]ts, her people’s safeguard95 within her camp, [on fire].
[Samsi] became startled [by] my mighty [weapon]s and she brought camels, she-camels, [with their young, to Assyria, befo]re me. I placed a representative (of mine) over her and [... 10,000 soldiers].
The passage starts with describing how Tiglath-Pileser III’s army travelled to Mount Saqurri (modern day Jebel al-Druz in Syria) in order to fight Samsi’s forces.
As is common practice for Assyrian royal inscriptions, there is no in-depth description of the battle. It simply says the Assyrian army defeated Samsi and her army, with no description of the types of troops or strategies involved. However, reliefs used to decorate Tiglath-Pileser III’s Central Palace in Kalḫu suggest dromedary camels played an important role in the battle.
Wall relief depicting Assyrian cavlarymen charging an Arab fighter on a camel. From the Central Palace at Nimrud, reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, ca. 728 BCE. © The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
We don’t know Samsi’s exact role in the battlefield, but one thing is for certain: she did not stand by as the wife of another military leader watching the action unfold. She was the ruler of the Arab forces, and if the sketch of a lost palace relief is to be believed, was present on the battlefield.
Sketch of a palace relief (now lost) showing a woman on a camel in battle – perhaps Samsi? Drawing by Henry Austin Layard. BM 2007, 6024.305. © The Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
The Assyrian scribes who wrote this narrative were keen to stress the scale of Samsi’s forces. They state 9,400 Arabs were killed in the battle, and a further 1,000 were rounded up in Samsi’s camp. Assyrian royal inscriptions tend to inflate and manipulate numbers to enhance a particular message. In this case, it was to suggest the Assyrian army was against a huge force, and were the underdogs in a pitched battle. The scribes conveniently omit that the Assyrian army was likely three times as big as Samsi’s — not such an underdog after all!
Even if the exact figure of at least 10,400 soldiers under Samsi’s command is inaccurate, the size of her army left an impression on the Assyrians. It must have been large in comparison to other forces the Assyrians faced in the region.
After the battle, the passage paints a grim picture. Samsi fled with her entourage, and survivors were rounded up whilst the camp was set on fire. As Samsi gazed at her burning camp from relative safety, she made a strategic decision. She could either continue to try to resist Assyria, with only her entourage and limited resources at her side, or she could surrender. The former option was costly, exhausting, and would likely end in further bloodshed and death — the latter meant survival for Samsi and the Arabs under her rule.
Wall relief depicting a woman (probably Samsi) leading a group of four camels to the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III. BM 118901. © The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Samsi surrendered, sending the only resource she still had from her hurried retreat: dromedary camels. This was so important it was depicted in Tiglath-Pileser III’s palace reliefs, with Samsi leading the camels to the king. It’s hard to overstate just how important dromedaries were to both Arabian communities and the Assyrians. They were uniquely suited to the Arabian environment, and are credited with allowing overland trade routes through the Peninsula. To have some dromedaries in the Assyrian arsenal would mean Tiglath-Pileser III’s forces could traverse the difficult terrain of the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, the royal inscriptions of the later Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) partially credits the Arabs and their knowledge of dromedaries for his ability to cross the difficult terrain into Egypt (RINAP 4 34, rev. 1-8). No wonder Samsi chose to send dromedaries to Tiglath-Pileser III as a peace offering. She knew the Assyrians viewed them as a valuable resource — so valuable it might just spare further bloodshed.
Samsi’s Survival and the Role of Gender
After Samsi’s surrender there was no guarantee that she would survive. Luckily for Samsi, Tiglath-Pileser III was the first Assyrian king to be confronted with how to punish a defeated female ruler. He could have killed Samsi after her surrender. Instead, Tiglath-Pileser III sent her back as ruler of the Arabs, with the caveat of a garrison of 10,000 Assyrian soldiers stationed in her territory to make sure Samsi acted in the best interests of Assyria. Evidently she acted correctly, as she was still alive and ruling in 715 BCE according to a royal inscription (RINAP 2 1, 123) of Sargon II (721-705 BCE).
So why did Tiglath-Pileser III choose to keep Samsi alive? I believe that the scribes’ placement of the narrative including Samsi immediately after the description of how the Samarian king Peqah was overthrown points to her difference as a woman. Both rulers were from roughly the same region (the Levant and the Northwest Arabian Peninsula), both were defeated, but whether they survived is the difference between the two. The main point of difference is the two rulers’ gender, suggesting Tiglath-Pileser III’s decision to allow Samsi to live was partially because she was a woman.
But why would an Assyrian king spare a ruler just because they were a woman? The answer lies in Assyrian gender norms and what was deemed “too far” as a punishment for a woman ruler. There are no mentions of Assyrian royal women directly involved in warfare, and there are no images of explicit violence against the bodies of women in the Assyrian palace reliefs. The only exception is from the reign of Ashurbanipal, and depicts a gruesome scene of Assyrian soldiers in an Arab camp killing and torturing Arab women. This all paints a picture that depicting violence against women went against Assyrian social norms and etiquette. So for Tiglath-Pileser III, the idea of carrying out further violence against a woman would have been an affront to Assyrian gender norms.
Tiglath-Pileser III walked a thin tightrope in his solution to this problem. By keeping Samsi alive, he did not perpetrate any further violence against a woman. But to make sure she continued to act in the best interests of Assyria, he made Assyria’s presence known by installing a garrison the size of her army in her territory, and placed her under the watchful eye of an Assyrian official.
A “Woman King”
In this short, small passage, the Assyrian scribes depicted Samsi as no different from other male foreign kings. In fact, the only reason we know Samsi was a woman at all is her name and her title. Just before her name is a sign that in Akkadian denotes a woman’s name, and her title was the feminine form of “king”: šarratu. Not only does the title show Samsi was a woman, but also that the Assyrian scribes saw her as holding the same power as kings.
This sounds like splitting hairs, but šarratu was not used as a title for any of the known Assyrian royal women. Their titles, like MÍ.É.GAL (literally “woman of the palace”), make it clear that their power lay in relation to the palace or the king. In contrast, šarratu suggests Samsi was the source of her own power. By using this title, the Assyrian scribes were saying she had a masculine form of power, and was acting just like any other foreign male king the Assyrians defeated.
Samsi was not the only woman with the title šarratu. Four other Arab women had this title, with the final attestation found in the royal inscriptions of Assurbanipal (668–ca. 631 BCE). The institution of “woman kings” lasted over 200 years. It was clearly an important element of Northwestern Arabian society in the first millennium. Sadly, with very little written evidence from the Arabians during this time, we can only rely on the Assyrian narrative. Samsi and the other “women kings” may have been part of a much older institution, and there are likely many other women whose names have been lost over time. Thankfully the little information recorded by the Assyrian scribes that we have about these women has ensured their legacy has not been forgotten, and Samsi can serve as a reminder of the power these ancient women held.
Ellie Bennett is an Assyriologist and a member of the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires at the University of Helsinki. Her book, The Queens of the Arabs During the Neo-Assyrian Period, was recently published by Eisenbrauns.
Further Reading
Bennett, Ellie. 2024. The Queens of the Arabs During the Neo-Assyrian Period. State Archives of Assyria Studies 33. The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Ephʿal, Israel. 1982. The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent 9th-5th Centuries BC. The Magnes Press and Brill.
Frahm, Eckart. 2023. Assyria. The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire. Bloomsbury Publishing.
How to cite this article:
Bennett, E. 2024. “Samsi, “Queen of the Arabs”, and Her Fight Against Assyria.” The Ancient Near East Today 12.11. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/samsi-queen-arabs/.
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