1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World
This volume offers the first comprehensive look at the role of women in the monarchies of the ancient Mediterranean. It consistently addresses certain issues across all dynasties: title; role in succession; the situation of mothers, wives, and daughters of kings; regnant and co-regnant women; role in cult and in dynastic image; and examines a sampling of the careers of individual women while placing them within broader contexts. Written by an international group of experts, this collection is based on the assumption that women played a fundamental role in ancient monarchy, that they were part of, not apart from it, and that it is necessary to understand their role to understand ancient monarchies. This is a crucial resource for anyone interested in the role of women in antiquity.
Part I: Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean
1. Introduction to thinking about women and monarchy in the ancient world.
Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller
Part II: Egypt and the Nile Valley
2. The King’s Mother in Old and Middle Kingdoms
Lisa Sabbahy
3. Regnant Women in Egypt
Martina Minas-Nerpal
4. The Image of Nefertiti
Athena Van der Perre
5. The God’s Wife of Amun: Origins and Rise to Power
Mariam F. Ayad
6. The Role and Status of Royal Women in Kush
Angelika Lohwasser
7. Ptolemaic Royal Women
Anne Bielman Sánchez and Giuseppina Lenzo
8. Berenike II
Sabine Müller
9. Royal Women and Ptolemaic Cults
Stefan Pfeiffer
10. Ptolemaic Women’s Patronage of the Arts
Silvia Barbantani
11. The Kleopatra Problem: Roman Sources and a Female Ptolemaic Ruler
Christoph Schäfer
Part III: The Ancient Near East
12. Invisible Mesopotamian Royal Women
Sebastian Fink
13. Achaimenid Women
Maria Brosius
14. Karian Royal Women and the Creation of a Royal Identity
Stephen Ruzicka
15. Seleukid Women
Marek Jan Olbrycht
16. Apama and Stratonike: the first Seleukid basilissai
Gillian Ramsey
17. Seleukid Marriage Alliances
Monica d’Agostini
18. Royal Mothers and Dynastic Power in Attalid Pergamon
Dolores Mirón
19. Hasmonean Women
Julia Wilker
20. Women at the Arsakid Court
Irene Madreiter and Udo Hartmann
21. Women of the Sasanid Dynasty (224-651 CE)
Josef Wiesehöfer
22. Zenobia of Palmyra
Lucinda Dirven
Part IV: Greece and Macedonia
23. "Royal" Women in the Homeric Epics
Johannes Heinrichs
24. Royal Women in Greek Tragedy
Hanna M. Roisman
25. Argead Women
Sabine Müller
26. Women in Antigonid Monarchy
Elizabeth D. Carney
Part V: Commonalities
27. Transitional Royal Women: Kleopatra, sister of Alexander the Great, Adea Eurydike, and Phila
Elizabeth D. Carney
28. Women and Dynasty and the Hellenistic Imperial Courts
Rolf Strootman
29. Royal Brother-Sister marriage, Ptolemaic and otherwise
Sheila L. Ager
30. Jugate Images in Ptolemaic and Julio-Claudian Monarchy
Dimitris Plantzos
Part VI: Rome: Late Republic through Empire
31. Octavia Minor and Patronage
Katrina Moore
32. Livia and the Principate of Augustus and Tiberius
Christiane Kunst
33. Julio-Claudian Imperial women
Francesca Cenerini
34. The Imperial Women from the Flavians to the Severi
Kordula Schnegg
35. Portraiture of Flavian imperial women
Annetta Alexandridis
36. The Faustinas
Stefan Priwitzer
37. Women in the Severan Dynasty
Riccardo Bertolazzi
38. Women in the Family of Constantine
Michaela Dirschlmayer
Part VII: Reception from Antiquity to Present Times
39. Semiramis: Perception and Presentation of Female Power in an Oriental Garb
Brigitte Truschnegg
40. Tanaquil and Tullia in Livy as Roman Caricatures of Greek Mythic and Historic Hellenistic Queens
Judith P. Hallett and Karen Klaiber Hersch
41. Roman Empresses on Screen: an Epic Failure?
Anja Wieber
Biography
Elizabeth D. Carney is Professor of History and Carol K. Brown Scholar in the Humanities, Emerita, at Clemson University, USA. Her focus has been on Macedonian and Hellenistic monarchy and the role of royal women in monarchy, most recently in Molossia. She has written Women and Monarchy in Ancient Macedonia (2000), Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great (2006), Arsinoë of Egypt and Macedon: A Royal Life (2013), and Eurydice and the Birth of Macedonian Power (2019). Some of her articles dealing with monarchy, with new afterwords, are collected in King and Court in Ancient Macedonia: Rivalry, Treason and Conspiracy (2015).
Sabine Müller is Professor of Ancient History at Marburg University, Germany. Her research focuses on the Persian empire, Argead Macedonia, the Hellenistic empires, Macedonian royal women, Lukian, and reception studies. Her publications include the monographs Das hellenistische Königspaar in der medialen Repräsentation. Ptolemaios II. und Arsinoë II. (2009), Perdikkas II. – Retter Makedoniens (2017), and Alexander der Große. Eroberung – Politik – Rezeption (2019).
"Whilst biographies of individual queens and treatments of their various dynastic families have at last come more into vogue in the new millennium, this is the first book to establish a comprehensive and fully comparative perspective on the royal women of the Ancient East Mediterranean as a larger phenomenon. Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller have assembled an international team of contributors from leading scholars in their sundry fields. These now supply authoritative accounts of the different dynasties and of the more prominent individual figures amongst them, whilst adopting an admirably diverse series of intellectual approaches…. The volume is presented in an open and engaging style that renders it not only useful for specialists but also accessible and interesting for undergraduates and general readers." - Daniel Ogden, University of Exeter, UK
"The work will be the first comprehensive treatment of ancient royal women and their role in the ancient Mediterranean. Especially welcome is the inclusion of such states as Caria, Kush, Palmyra, and the Parthians, which are often ignored in such works. Second, and equally important, the analysis of royal women is firmly located in the context of the institution of monarchy with a clear recognition of the varied forms monarchy took in the ancient Mediterranean world. The editors have assembled an excellent team of authors, which ensures that the chapters will be of high quality… This is an excellent project, and the resulting volume will be a valuable contribution to scholarship on ancient Mediterranean monarchy." - Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles, USA
