Wonder Woman of the Week: Shammuramat

This week's Wonder Woman comes all the way from Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Shammuramat's "wonder" would eventually inspire the mythical character of Semiramis- a powerful warrior queen in Persian, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies. The Shammuramat lived up to the legend too. Historians still debate the translation of her name as either "dove" or "thunder of heaven," but Shammuramat likely lived up to both names as a master of both politics and war. The warrior queen got her start as the wife of Neo-Assyrian King Shamshi-Adad V and ruled as the regent for her son Adad-nirari III as the effective queen of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Stretched from the Caucus in the north to Arabia in the south and from Cyprus in the west to Persia in the east, Shammuramat would have had effective rulership over a massive empire; but that empire was on the downfall. In her time, there was great political conflict within the Neo-Assyrian Empire and several violent neighbors on the frontier; which may have been why the Neo-Assyrians were open to a woman ruling them. There is little known about her reign, but historians believe Shammuramat led political and military campaigns to conquer neighboring states and stabilize internal factions based on the myths attributed to Semiramis. These include a successful conquest of Armenia, dedicating the construction of defensive walls and palaces across Mesopotamia, and annexing Libya. It's hard to know the true extend of Shammuramat's achievements, but she must have been an impressive ruler to inspire such a legendary character in multiple cultures' mythologies.