Banitu

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Banitu was the wife of the Assyrian king Salmānu-ašarēd V or Shalmanasser V (his biblical name), who lived from 726 to 721 BC. BC ruled both the New Assyrian Empire and Babylon. The name Banitu is Assyrian. But nothing else is known.

Her name appears on objects in an untouched tomb found by Iraqi archaeologists in 1989 in the northwestern palace ruins of Nimrud . There were grave goods with the names of three queens, but only the remains of two bodies. Therefore it is difficult to clearly identify them. The objects, including 700 small rosettes made of gold and rivets made of agate with gold edges, were probably mostly sewn into the linen fabric with which the corpses were covered, or wrapped in its folds. It is certain that the tomb for Yâba was laid out. The inscription on a plaque built into the wall mentions her name. She was the wife of Tiglat-Pileser III. , the father and predecessor of Salmānu-ašarēd V. One of the two corpses can therefore be assigned to her. The second corpse is more likely to contain Atalia , the wife of Šarru-kīn II , the brother and successor of Salmānu-ašarēd V. The objects from Banitu could possibly also have been gifts during his lifetime, which were placed in the tomb.

However, recent research suggests that there is a simpler explanation for the absence of the third corpse. Yâba and Banitu could have been the same woman. On the one hand, both names translate to mean "the beautiful" and the mother of the former king Sennacherib was already known both by the Akkadian name Naqia and Zakutu , a West Semitic version of the same name. Assuming that Yâba was not his mother, but a much later, younger wife of the father, Salmānu-ašarēd V could have married his father's widow. Such a connection corresponds to the established tradition of additionally legitimizing one's own claim to the throne. However, there is no evidence that this was the case in this particular case.

literature

  • Joan Oates: Nimrud. An Assyrian period city revealed. British School of Archeology in Iraq, London 2001, ISBN 0-903472-25-2 , pp. 83-84.
  • S. Dalley: The identity of the princesses in Tomb II and a new analysis of events in 701 BC. In: JE Curtis et al. (Ed.): New light on Nimrud: proceedings of the Nimrud Conference, 11th-13th March 2002. British Institute for the Study of Iraq, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-903472-24-1 , p 171-175.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Salvatore Gaspa: Prehistoric, Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Textiles and Dress . Ed .: Mary Harlow, Cécile Michel, Marie-Louise Nosch. Oxbow, 2014, ISBN 978-1-78297-719-3 ( full text in Google book search).
  2. ^ Karen Radner: Shalmaneser V, king of Assyria (726-722 BC) . In: Assyrian empire builders . University College London 2012 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Banitu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Queen of Assyria
DATE OF BIRTH 8th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 8th century BC BC or 7th century BC Chr.