Ambiguous Identities the ‘Marriage’ Vase of Niqmaddu II and the Elusive Egyptian Princess....
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Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 15.1 (2002) 75-99 ISSN 0952-7648
Ambiguous Identities: The ‘Marriage’ Vase of Niqmaddu II and the Elusive Egyptian Princess Marian H. Feldman Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA E-mail:
[email protected]
Abstract A fourteenth-century BC alabaster vase found at Ugarit on the coast of Syria bears a representation of a man and a woman often interpreted as husband and wife. The man is identified as Syrian both in an inscription stating he is Niqmaddu, ruler of Ugarit, and in his physical rendering. The identity of the lady, dressed in Egyptian court fashion, remains uncertain. The image has been used both to support and refute a claim made in a contemporary international letter that Egypt never gave its princesses in marriage to foreign rulers. This article examines how the image deploys the indeterminate identity of the woman within an explicitly identified scene of royal representation. The rationale for such intentional ambiguity lies in Ugarit’s role in the political relations of the Late Bronze Age, a world of diplomacy in which the Ugaritic king operated on both the foreign and domestic levels. The element of ambiguity serves as a critical component in status negotiations, and images present an ideal vehicle for coding flexible messages in diplomatic maneuvers.
Introduction Rulers of the ancient Near East arranged interdynastic marriages among themselves and their offspring as a primary mechanism for developing and preserving international alliances. This practice, in its intensified and formulaic structure, is well documented in the written sources of the fifteenth through thirteenth centuries BC (the ‘extended Amarna age’). In general, these transactions involved the giving of a king’s daughter to another king to be installed in his court. The event was preceded by elaborate negotiations and accompanied by the exchange of great quantities of wealth in the form of both bride-price and dowry. At least four of the major powers of this time are known to have participated in such marriage alliances—Mit-
tani, Babylonia, Hatti, and Egypt—as well as many of the less powerful kingdoms (Figure 1). Reciprocity of relations and equality of rank characterize certain diplomatic relations of the extended Amarna age. The kings who entered into marriage negotiations viewed themselves and their fellow rulers as occupying exalted ranks of international status and interacted with one another in supposedly balanced relations. The rhetoric of parity should therefore have included reciprocity of exchanged royal women. Yet Egypt’s participation, as one of the preeminent powers, remains uncertain with respect to its attitude toward these interdynastic marriages. Subtle expressions of imbalance appear throughout the documentation for international relations, but none so blatantly as that of Egypt’s declaration against giving a
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Figure 1. Map of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East during the ‘extended Amarna age’ (After Cohen and Westbrook 2000).
princess in marriage, which is quoted in a diplomatic letter from the king of Babylonia, ‘from time immemorial no daughter of the king of Egy[pt] is given to anyone’ (EA 4, translation by Moran 1992). Coupled with the lack of any other textual evidence for such behavior, some scholars have postulated that in this particular area, Egypt did not ‘play by the rules’ of international protocol. The introduction of visual evidence, specifically fragments of an alabaster vase depicting a possible diplomatic marriage between an Egyptian princess and a foreign ruler, complicates the interpretation (Figures 2 and 3). The vessel fragments, found in the palace at Ugarit (present-day Ras Shamra on the coast of © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
Syria), bear an incised representation of an encounter between a woman and a man. The man is identified by an accompanying Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription as Niqmaddu, ruler of Ugarit. The lady appears in Egyptian court fashion as she stands before him pouring liquid from a small vase. Debate over the identity of this woman has raged concerning whether she is or is not an Egyptian princess given in marriage by an Egyptian king (for most recent discussion see Singer 1999: 624-26). The possibility that this figure may represent an exchanged Egyptian princess has fueled arguments both for and against Egypt’s willingness to reciprocate in the game of diplomatic alliances. While the man in the scene is explicitly identified as Syrian in
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Figure 2. Photograph of alabaster vase fragments from royal palace at Ugarit (Ras Shamra), Syria, Damascus National Museum (courtesy of the Mission de Ras Shamra).
Figure 3. Drawing of alabaster vase fragments from royal palace at Ugarit (Ras Shamra), Syria, Damascus National Museum (after Schaeffer 1956: fig. 118).
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both the inscription and in his physical rendering, the woman’s identity remains indeterminate. It is precisely this visual ambiguity of identity and rank that this paper explores in light of diplomatic marriages and political negotiation. Ambiguity and multivalency are relied upon as tools in the process of negotiation that is central to political relations, and evidence of their deployment survives in written diplomatic documents of the time (Meier 2000: 173). Yet visual forms and images present more conducive vehicles for coding ambiguous messages, being removed from the verbal realm by which the ancient participants evaluated claims (Baxandall 1985: 1-11; Uehlinger 2000: xxvii). As has been noted by many art historians, ‘unlike words, even those fixed in a written text, visual images have an almost infinite capacity for verbal extension, because viewers must become their own narrators, changing the images into some form of internalized verbal expression’ (Brilliant 1984: 16). In other words, no image, and especially not one depicting an elite person on a prestige object, reflects a simple, literal reality. Rather, it presents a view that was carefully constructed by the patron and/or artist with the intention of conveying particular signification. Because of this, we must accept that images were important means of expression, and like all forms of expression, could be more or less explicit depending on the desires of the producer (here, the patron, rather than the manufacturer, is taken as the primary agent in determining the iconography of the work). It is suggested in this article that the lady’s visually ambiguous identity and lack of inscription permitted implicit messages that were intentionally deployed for purposes of status negotiation. The enigmatic imagery on the vase fragments, when connected with the Late Bronze Age world of political (both international and domestic) relations, can be understood as a vehicle for expressing diplomatic rhetoric.
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Niqmaddu’s ‘Marriage’ Scene The alabaster fragments in question were recovered along with other alabaster vessels from the royal palace of Ugarit (RS 15.239/ Damascus Museum 4160; Caubet 1991: 230). The two pieces were found in room 31, which opens onto court IV (Schaeffer 1956: 164). Court IV as well as its adjoining and upper rooms housed the so-called ‘central archive’ that included records of the gifts and exchanges of land overseen by the king, most of which date to the reign of Ammistamru II (ca. 1263–1220 BC; Bordreuil and Pardee 1989: 81152; van Soldt 1991: 74-96). Room 31 and its neighboring room 30 contained fragments of approximately five other alabaster vessels, including three bearing Egyptian royal cartouches of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Ramses II, as well as another bearing the cartouche of Amenhotep III (found in Court IV), which link them to the international world (Schaeffer 1956: 164; Caubet 1991: nos. 15.201-203, 15. 258, and 16.340). A recent analysis of the alabaster vases has reiterated the difficulty in distinguishing between actual imports from Egypt and local Levantine products, or even Egyptian pieces manufactured specifically for Levantine export, although those vessels bearing Egyptian royal names are generally considered to be products of Egyptian workshops (Caubet 1991: 218). Material analysis of the stone cannot resolve the problem since unworked Egyptian alabaster could be imported into Syria for local production. Found in the main palace as well as in elite residences and tombs, the Egyptian/Egyptianizing vases of alabaster would have carried a high degree of prestige (Caubet 1991: 219). Those that bear Egyptian royal cartouches are only found in the royal palace or, in two cases, close by the palace (Caubet 1991: 214). The fragmentary vessel in question, which probably belonged to a large amphora-type table vessel, is unique among the
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Ambiguous Identities Ras Shamra finds both in its imagery and its reference to a specific Ugaritic ruler (Caubet 1991: 213). The carefully incised design preserves the upper part of a meeting between a woman and a man that takes place beneath a portico or kiosk supported on either side by columns surmounted with ornate lotus, papyrus and volute capitals of Egyptian type. The cornice and columns frame the upper and side boundaries of the image, while the lower extent does not survive. Five columns of Egyptian hieroglyphs run below the cornice and read from right to left, ‘the chief [ruler] of the land of Ugarit, Niqmaddu’ (wr n h st Jkrt, Nyq mdy). Immediately below the inscription is the upper part of a man’s head; the rest of his body is lost beyond the break. Facing him to the right stands the woman in Egyptian dress, coiffure and headdress. She holds a cloth in one hand and with the other pours liquid from a slender vessel. In between the two figures sits a profile rendering of a spotted cow’s head that resembles rhyta of Aegean type known from examples found on Crete and pictured as tribute in early 18th Dynasty Egyptian private tombs (Desroches-Noblecourt 1956: 191). Comparable scenes of women pouring wine for the king seated under a columned portico appear in Egyptian art. One example, from the tomb of Meryra II at Amarna, presents an almost identical composition, though in reverse, to that on the alabaster vase fragments (Figure 4; Davies 1905: pl. 32). In the tomb relief, Queen Nefertiti bends slightly forward as she pours wine from a tall slender vessel, through a strainer and into a shallow cup held by the seated Akhenaten. The two are enclosed in an elaborately ornamented portico supported by two columns. The double cornice features two rows of closely set uraei. In addition to the inscription on the vase fragments, which explicitly identifies the man as an © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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Ugaritic ruler, the representation provides physiognomic and dress-related markers of his Syrian identity (Desroches-Noblecourt 1956: 190; Caubet 1991: 213). Although only the upper part of his head survives and the alabaster fragments are relatively small in size, the features of the upper profile and headdress are clearly visible. The face and head (bearing headdress) are, moreover, generally the most important locations for signaling personal/group identification (Wobst 1977: 328-35). His full rounded head and prominent nose recall images of men from the Syro-Palestine area, as well as depictions of Syrians in Egyptian tombs, as does the hairstyle bound by a wide fillet.1 The larger size of his head relative to the woman’s figure indicates that he was probably seated. The proportions of the woman’s body and the detailing of the cornice and columns when compared to dated Egyptian examples provide a late fourteenthcentury date, roughly contemporary with the end of the 18th Dynasty, from the reign of Akhenaten through Ay (Desroches-Noblecourt 1956: 209-18). The vase can therefore be placed in the reign of Niqmaddu II (ca. 1350-1315), the only Ugaritic king by that name to have reigned during the time to which the imagery stylistically belongs. A brief review of scholarly art historical opinion regarding this piece serves to emphasize the competing interpretations and general lack of consensus. In all cases, interest has rested with the identification of the woman and its implications for the work as a whole. In the initial 1956 publication, Christine Desroches-Noblecourt proposed that the scene might commemorate a marriage between an Ugaritic king and an Egyptian princess. Although the lady would be smaller than the seated man should he stand, she occupies an important position within the portico and faces him at eye level, which Desroches-Noblecourt (1956: 191) interprets as indicating roughly equal rank. According to Egyptian parallels such as that from the tomb of
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Figure 4.
Drawing of Queen Nefertiti pouring wine for Akhenaten, Tomb of Meryra II, Amarna, Egypt (after Davies 1905: pl. 32).
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Ambiguous Identities Meryra II, the woman shown on the fragment from Ugarit might be interpreted as a subject of high enough rank to occupy a royal portico, a favorite daughter, or an attentive wife (Desroches-Noblecourt 1956: 197). DesrochesNoblecourt rejects the second possibility, claiming that the Egyptian-looking lady could not possibly be the daughter of an Ugaritic king as they are two different ‘ethnic types’, that is, physiognomically they appear ethnically differentiated.2 She excludes the first possibility because if the woman in question is a subject, then she is an Egyptian sent to Ugarit on official business (e.g. as a messenger or ambassador) and such a role is not known for a woman
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except as a wife. Thus, only the third identification remains as a possibility for DesrochesNoblecourt. The iconography of the scene may further support this interpretation. The act of pouring liquid before a man carries potentially erotic or sexual overtones in Egyptian art, seen for example in a panel on a gold shrine from Tutankhamun’s tomb (Troy 1986: 59, fig. 38). For Desroches-Noblecourt (1956: 198), the headdress—a box-like platform surmounted by circular flowers—is the most critical iconographic element in the identification of the figure, and she uses it to support her interpretation: that the woman is an Egyptian married to Niqmaddu. The best-known Egyptian image
Figure 5. Drawing of detail of the daughters of Menna, Tomb of Menna (Theban Tomb 69), Egypt (after Troy 1986: fig. 50). © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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that depicts women wearing such a headdress is in the tomb of Menna, whose daughters are designated in the inscriptions as h krt nsw or ‘ornaments of the king’, a phrase commonly associated with royal women and members of the harem (Figure 5; Davies 1936: 104, pl. LIII). In a discussion of this title, Troy (1986: 78) associates these women with royal wives and the cultic rites of Hathor. One can also compare the headdress of Niqmaddu’s companion with that worn by the princess Sitamun, daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiyi. On the back reliefs of two chairs found in the tomb of Tiyi’s parents Yuya and Tuya, the royal daughter is shown as a young, presumably unmarried, girl wearing the platform (or ‘modius’) crown ornamented with flowers (Figures 6 and 7; Davis 2000: 37-44; Quibell 1908: 52-53, nos. 51112 and 51113; Eaton-Krauss 1989: n. g.). Sitamun is described elsewhere as a royal wife of her father, Amenhotep III (Arnold 1996: 8). The headdress, however, remains elusive with regard to its meaning, especially because variations mark each known example. For instance, in the tomb of Menna, the foremost daughter’s platform is surmounted by circular flower ornaments, while the second daughter’s is not. In both, the platform crown is associated with a wide fillet fronted by a gazelle protome.3 On the larger chair of Sitamun, the platform crown is surmounted by open and closed lotus flowers, not circular rosettes, and she wears a long sidelock of youth (Figure 6). A closer comparison with the headdress depicted on the alabaster fragments occurs on the smaller chair of Sitamun, where she wears the platform crown with circular ornaments and a fillet fronted by a lotus flower; although, again she is shown with the youthful sidelock (Figure 7). The platform crown without any ornaments on top appears not just on Menna’s second daughter, but also on the daughters of Amenhotep III and the so-called ‘great ones’ depicted in the tomb of Kheruef (TT 192; Epigraphic © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
Survey 1980: pls. 32 and 57). Troy (1986: 121) discusses the platform crown, which was popular in the 18th Dynasty. She notes that in the visual record, it is worn by royal women (that is, what Troy calls the ‘feminine aspect of kingship’, which includes the king’s mother, wife, sister, and daughters; 1986: 2) and by prominent members of the harem. Therefore, surmises Desroches-Noblecourt (1956: 204), the lady wearing a platform crown is shown in the attitude of a wife and could be either an Egyptian princess or the daughter of a very high Egyptian official placed in the king’s harem. Because it was inconceivable to DesrochesNoblecourt (1956: 204) that a king of Ugarit would settle for a wife of non-royal blood, she concludes that an Egyptian princess was sent to Ugarit as a token of Egypt’s esteem for the Syrian kingdom and that this image commemorates the union. This conclusion of course remains speculative, and there appear to be several possible examples of queens of nonroyal lineage during the New Kingdom in Egypt itself, including Amenhotep III’s wife Tiyi (Kozloff and Bryan 1992: 41-43). Based on the reasoning of Desroches-Noblecourt, any of three possibilities persist: she could be an Egyptian royal woman, she could be an Egyptian harem lady of royal favor, or she could be a simple Egyptian lady arrayed in the clothes of status of her native land. That she was not Egyptian, however, is never considered by Desroches-Noblecourt. Despite her conclusion that the vase commemorated an interdynastic marriage, Desroches-Noblecourt argues that the scene was probably not carved by an Egyptian artist. For her, several details, such as slightly misinterpreted features of the headdress and dress in addition to the use of ibex heads along the upper cornice of the portico instead of the traditional Egyptian royal iconography of uraei, suggest a non-Egyptian manufacture. Bryan (1996: 60) reiterates this point of view, ‘The
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Figure 6. Drawing of relief from back of larger chair of Sitamun, from the Tomb of Yuya and Tuya, Egypt (after Troy 1986: fig. 59).
Figure 7. Drawing of relief from back of smaller chair of Sitamun, from the Tomb of Yuya and Tuya, Egypt (after Davis 2000: 43, fig. 4). © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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alabaster bowl fragment of Niqmaddu (late 18th Dynasty) is so faithful to the original source that it uses a hieroglyphic inscription but at the same time carefully avoids using [Egyptian] royal iconography for the Ugaritic king by substituting a Syrian ibex head frieze for the original uraei.’ Desroches-Noblecourt (1956: 219) interprets these irregularities as signs that this vessel was a copy by a local Ugaritic artist after an original Egyptian vase sent as a wedding present. Such an explanation seems rather cumbersome, and I prefer to consider this work as a carefully composed and planned scene. The excavator Schaeffer concurred with Desroches-Noblecourt, viewing this piece as commemorating an alliance between Egypt and Ugarit, an opinion maintained by many scholars today (Singer 1999: 625). Schaeffer (1956: 168) contended that Niqmaddu II, a contemporary of Akhenaten in Egypt and Shuppiluliuma in Hatti (central Anatolia), married a daughter of Akhenaten, implying, although not explicitly stating, that this unusual event might be attributable to Akhenaten’s generally unorthodox reign. While the alabaster vessel image was thus presented in the 1950s as an interdynastic marriage scene, debate concerning the accuracy and likelihood of this interpretation has since developed. Schulman (1979) provided a counterpoint to the scene’s interpretation in his article on Egyptian diplomatic marriages. He concludes that during periods of political strength, such as the 18th Dynasty, Egypt’s attitude toward diplomatic marriages was ‘one-sided’, receiving foreign princesses without reciprocating. He introduces the claim made in the international letter sent to Egypt from Babylonia, Amarna Letter (EA) 4 noted above, stating, ‘As a case in point, there is the reply of Amunhotpe III to Kadasman-Enlil I [king of Babylonia] when the latter sought a bride from Egypt: “from old, the daughter of © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
an Egyptian king has not been given in marriage to anyone”’ (Schulman 1979: 179, 18791). The lack of any other textual evidence for Egyptian brides sent abroad during the New Kingdom further supports Schulman’s conclusion.4 He himself, however, does not dissent from Desroches-Noblecourt’s interpretation of the vase imagery, but rather sidesteps the issue by seeing her as an Egyptian court lady, not an actual daughter of the king (Schulman 1979: 185 and n. 39). A catalog entry for the alabaster fragments when they were displayed in a major exhibition of Syrian archaeology in the early 1980s, written by Marianne Eaton-Krauss, states the change in opinion and introduces a new possibility that the lady—regardless of rank—is not an Egyptian at all. ‘An early theory was that the woman depicted was an Egyptian princess’ (Weiss 1985, cat. no 156; Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 1982, cat. no. 144). Citing the same passage in EA 4 as Schulman, she continues, ‘If the important king of Babylon was refused an Egyptian princess, it is very unlikely that this right would be granted to a mere Syrian prince. Probably the wife of Niqmaddu was Syrian… The most likely explanation is that Niqmaddu ordered this vessel depicting himself and his Syrian wife to be made in the Egyptian style.’ This explanation, however, fails to account for Niqmaddu’s explicitly non-Egyptian depiction and the substitution of ibex heads for uraei on the portico cornice. A fragmentary ivory plaque found at Megiddo from the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the twelfth century BC furnishes a useful comparison (Figures 8 and 9; Loud 1939: pl. 63). A scene at the top depicts a man seated on the right while a standing young woman presents flowers to him. The entire scene is executed in a homogeneously Egyptianizing manner, yet the inscription identifies the man as ‘prince of Ashkelon’, a small Levantine kingdom (Bryan 1996: 57-9).
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Figure 9.
Figure 8.
Photograph of fragment of ivory showing prince of Ashkelon, from Megiddo (Loud 1939, pl. 62; courtesy of The Oriental Institute Museum, The University of Chicago).
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Detail of ivory showing prince of Ashkelon, from Megiddo (Loud 1939: pl. 63; courtesy of The Oriental Institute Museum, The University of Chicago).
Figure 10. Photograph of fragment of alabaster vase from Assur (VA8379); courtesy of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
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Part of the ivory’s inscription, wr… (‘chief of’), is located in the same position as the inscription of Niqmaddu on the alabaster vase, directly in front of the seated figure’s head. Another ivory, an uninscribed plaque from Tell el-Farah South (in the southern Levant), depicts a similar Egyptianizing scene of a woman pouring liquid before a seated figure (Bryan 1996: 62-64). A rather different situation may obtain on a fragment of an alabaster vessel excavated from the foundations of Adadnirari I’s (1305–1274 BC) palace at Assur in northern Mesopotamia (Figure 10; Bissing 1940: 152-53, no. 5, VA 8379). In this case, the fragment shows two seated figures facing one another, the one on the right preserved from the waist down, the one on the left retaining only the foot and leg up to the knee. The figure to the right wears a triple-flounced robe closely resembling the flounced robes worn by Syrian women depicted in 18th Dynasty Egyptian private tombs at Thebes, for example that of Nebamun (TT 17; Smith 1965: 29). The woman probably faced her husband, the vestiges of whose robe appear to show the typical wrapped garment of Syrian men, also known from Egyptian imagery.5 In other words, in the Assur vase fragment, the attire of both participants seems to belong to the Syrian sphere. There is no inscription surviving to provide further identification of the individuals. Even in these few examples, we see a range of cultural modes signaled from the entirely Syrian to the entirely Egyptian, so that we may accept a high degree of conscious selection on the part of the producers (whether the artist[s] or patron[s]). The 1980s exhibition of Syrian archaeology also produced a French-language catalog, and Christiane Ziegler’s entry for the vase fragments from Ugarit assesses the issue of the woman’s identity (Petit Palais 1983: cat. no. 206). She notes, ‘On n’a pas manqué de s’interroger sur la signification de la scène.’ She asks, Did Niqmaddu marry a Syrian and dress © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
her up like an Egyptian, or did an Egyptian king (possibly Akhenaten) consent to a unique privilege in giving one of his daughters to the petty king of Ugarit? While she adds that the latter hypothesis is appealing, because it illuminates details of the international relations of the fourteenth century BC, the evidence supporting it, namely the headdress of the lady, is tenuous since court women wore it in addition to royal princesses. She therefore concludes that while we must acknowledge the significant place the piece occupies regarding relations between Ugarit and Egypt, we are not in a position to determine with any degree of certainty whether this is an Egyptian artistic work or not. Implicit in this conclusion is that if the piece were produced in Egypt, then the lady could be assumed Egyptian; if not, then Ziegler’s first hypothesis would be more likely. In spite of and in many ways because of the ultimate uncertainty surrounding the identity of the lady, the alabaster vase fragments have been used both to support and refute the contention that Egypt never gave away princesses and in turn to raise or lower the status of the Ugaritic king. If the lady depicted is an Egyptian princess then this vessel may have been commissioned specifically to commemorate the marriage, the artist/patron actively seeking to associate Syrian and Egyptian elements. In such a reading, the statement in EA 4 refusing to give an Egyptian princess because of lack of precedent might represent a pointed diplomatic affront to Babylonia by the Egyptian king rather than a simple matter of fact. Or one might also follow the suggestion of the excavator, that Akhenaten’s highly unconventional reign permitted such transgressions of previously inviolable traditions. If, however, one accepts the written statement in EA 4 as the literal truth (having no other textual evidence contradicting it), then the imagery on the alabaster vase fragments might appear
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Ambiguous Identities as a clumsy attempt by a lesser ruler at imitating an Egyptian scene of domestic intimacy between the king and his wife. The selective nature of Egyptian versus non-Egyptian iconographic elements including the rendering of Niqmaddu, however, suggests that this image was carefully constructed in association with the Ugaritic king. I would like to propose an alternative interpretation, one that walks a fine line between the aforementioned theories. Rather than point in absolute terms to either the foreign policy of the Egyptian kings or the ineptness of the Ugaritic artists, the imagery can be understood as containing an ambiguous element (the woman’s identity) within a clearly defined scene of royal representation (Niqmaddu II). To better grasp the rationale behind such intentional ambiguity, the alabaster vase fragments must be viewed within the larger context of the kingdom of Ugarit and its position in the political relations of the Late Bronze Age. In the arenas of international and domestic rhetoric, ambiguity occupies a prominent role as a means of maneuvering, and visual media provides an ideal venue for it since, in the absence of an inscription, an image never explicitly commits to a single reading, while at the same time it contains multivalent allusions. As Barthes (1977: 37-41) notes, ‘all images are polysemous; they imply, underlying their signifiers, a “floating chain” of signified, the reader able to choose some and ignore others…the text helps to identify purely and simply the elements of the scene and the scene itself…the denominative function corresponds exactly to an anchoring of all possible (denoted) meanings of the object by recourse to a nomenclature…the text directs the reader through the signified of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others.’ The case of Niqmaddu and his inscription serves to highlight the floating identity of the lady who is not mentioned in any inscription. The king© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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dom of Ugarit actively participated in political relations at the international, local, and domestic level.6 Its rulers aspired to higher status with respect to both the great international powers, such as Egypt and Hatti, and the small kingdoms neighboring Ugarit like Amurru to its south. At the same time, an expression of kingship was being molded within Ugarit itself beginning in the late fourteenth century with the reign of Niqmaddu II (Klengel 1992: 13134). The alabaster vase fragments speak differently to each of the different constituents, although perhaps most strongly to the local and domestic audiences. Thus I shy away from trying to determine a fixed meaning for the woman’s identity, acknowledging instead its floating messages within a context of multiple potential diplomatic exchanges. Diplomatic Relations and Interdynastic Marriages The fifteenth through thirteenth centuries BC witnessed a remarkable period of diplomatic interactions among kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean sometimes referred to as the ‘extended Amarna Age’ (Artzi 1978: 34-36). The period derives its name from the significant archive of international correspondence found at the site of Amarna (ancient Akhetaten, capital of Egypt under Akhenaten) in Middle Egypt, which provides some of our best evidence for diplomatic interactions (Cohen and Westbrook 2000; Moran 1992). While the Amarna letters cover only a short period of time, from 20 to 30 years in the mid- to late fourteenth century, similar archives found at the Hittite capital of Hattusha (present-day Boghazköy) extend the diplomatic period through the thirteenth century, and royal inscriptions of Tuthmose III suggest a higher chronological horizon in the fifteenth century (Artzi 1978: 34-36). The alabaster fragments under discussion date to the restricted time-frame of the Amarna let-
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ters as evidenced by at least one letter from Niqmaddu to the Egyptian king (EA 49). The polities involved include the set of self-classed ‘great powers’ of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Mittani, and Hatti, as well as smaller kingdoms such as Ugarit occupying the intersticies (Figure 1; Tadmor 1979: 3). During the time in question, rulers and their households participated in a complex political system based on reciprocal exchange and the metaphor of brotherhood. A select group of the highest ranking powers, known as ‘great kings’, set the standard, which was emulated by the lesser polities. It is, therefore, instructive to examine the diplomatic relations of the great kings in order to understand to what the Ugaritic kings aspired. Letters sent between the great kings, best represented by the archives found at Amarna and Hattusha, express a coherent concept of international kingship. Written in the lingua franca of the time, Babylonian Akkadian, they describe a ‘supraregional’ sphere of royal interaction that bound the rulers together despite separate cultural loyalties. In particular, they document relations as highly formalized and based on reciprocal exchanges. Good relations were predicated on the continuous exchange of written salutations carried from one court to another by messenger-diplomats. Within the circle of interaction established by these exchanges, rulers called each other brother and operated within a community of brotherhood (Liverani 1990a; Cohen 1996: 11-28; Cohen and Westbrook 2000). This metaphor of blood ties was given physical reality through interdynastic marriages. For example, a marriage alliance sealed the conclusion of peace negotiations between Hatti and Egypt in the thirteenth century. In a letter to Ramses II, the Hittite queen Puduhepa writes, ‘the daughter of the king of Hatti arrived in the land of Egypt, and two great countries became a single country…and two great kings became a single © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
brotherhood (ah h u tu)’ (KUB III 24+59: 3-4, 7-8; translation by Liverani 1990a: 282). In addition to such marriages, a special kind of gift, called in Akkadian s ulma nu , helped to cement the bonds of friendship (CochaviRainey 1999). The giving and receiving of these gifts, recorded in the letters as valuable prestige objects, identified the participants as belonging to the highest level of rulership. On the reverse of a damaged tablet found at Hattusha is what is thought to be a draft or copy of a letter sent from a Hittite king (Hattushili III or Tudhaliya IV) to an Assyrian king that clearly sets forth the protocol of gift giving: ‘Did [my brother] not send you appropriate gifts of greeting (s ulma nu )? But when I assumed kingship, you did not send a messenger to me. It is the custom that when kings assume kingship, the [other] kings, his equals in rank, send him appropriate [gifts of greeting], clothing befitting kingship, and fine [oil] for his anointing. But you did not do this today.’ (KBo I 14, recto 310; translation by Beckman 1996: no. 24 B). S ulma nu , from the root S LM, ‘to make well’, functioned as literal ‘well-wishing items’ that materially embodied a permanent manifestation of friendly diplomatic relations (Zaccagnini 1973: 202-3; Chicago Assyrian Dictionary S , vol. III 1992: 244-45). Luxury goods that have been excavated in royal contexts around the eastern Mediterranean may have functioned as such gifts (Feldman 1998; Lilyquist 1999: 211-18). The letters themselves remain laconic in their description of specific items, noting primarily the material and type of object. On occasion, a more forthcoming account follows. For example, ‘one small container of aromatics of gold with one ibex in its center’ (EA 14) that can be compared to an alabaster ointment jar from the tomb of Tutankhamun or ‘one dagger, the blade of which is of iron, its guard of gold with designs, its haft of ebony with calf figurines overlaid with gold’ (EA 22) also comparable to items from Tutankhamun’s
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Ambiguous Identities tomb assemblage (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1976: cat. nos. 16 and 20). Some of the excavated objects of gold, ivory, alabaster and faience were executed in a hybridized style that was derived from styles of the constituent regions, but combined in such a manner as not to belong to any one in particular. By means of such hybridization, these luxury goods that may have been exchanged as gifts perfectly expressed a supra-regional community of rulers who rhetorically professed their ties to one another through the metaphor of brotherhood (Feldman 2002: 17-24; 1998). Such prestige objects have been found at Ugarit, several in the royal palace where the alabaster vase lay. These include ivory inlays of a tabletop, a fragmentary ivory wing, the upper plaques of a pair of ivory furniture panels—all from the palace—and a gold bowl from a cache buried on the acropolis (Feldman 1998). Although Ugarit never attained the rank of ‘great power’, sources indicate that its rulers actively aspired to increase their status through a number of diplomatic vehicles. Acceptance and participation in the international network of exchange was foremost among these. The luxury goods found at the site, therefore, may have operated on the level of emulation and uncertain identification (Feldman 1998: ch. 5). Their formal features of hybridism appear like prestige objects of the highest rank, although their identification as greeting gifts remains indeterminate. Because the designation of an object as a greeting gift depends on an ultimately ephemeral act, that is the transfer from one party to another, once at their place of rest, it becomes impossible to ascertain or verify how the object arrived at its final location. And because the international hierarchy was structured around such ephemeral acts, manipulation of the system could effect changes in real or perceived status. Within this hierarchical and formalized diplomatic system described by the letters, © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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princesses and their female attendants constituted a principal item of exchange (Artzi 1987; Meier 2000; Pintore 1978). The subject of interdynastic marriage occupies a large part of the discussion in the letters, in which foreign rulers negotiated for princesses in order to place them in their harems. In the Amarna letters, the Mittanian king Tushratta recounted how his daughter, given to the Egyptian king, served to strengthen their ties, ‘When I gave my daughter…and your father saw her, he rejoiced. Was there anything he did not rejoice about? He rejoiced very, very much!’ (EA 29: 28-30; translation by Moran 1992). Similarly, Queen Puduhepa of Hatti, who was instrumental in negotiating a marriage between Egypt and Hatti, wrote in one letter, ‘The daughter of Babylon and the daughter of Amurru, whom I, the Queen, took for myself—were they not indeed a source of praise for me before the people of Hatti? It was I who did it.’ (KUB 21.38, obv. 47-49 = CTH 176; translation by Beckman 1996: no. 22E). In such situations, foreign princesses functioned in an analogous manner to the greeting gifts. Not only did marriage create kinship bonds, but like the gifts, their physical presence served as a lasting material embodiment of the reciprocated friendly feelings established between two kingdoms. This analogy with greeting gifts, in combination with the establishment of familial relations, made foreign princesses primary markers of high status for their new homeland. While the preceding description of diplomatic relations is drawn from the highest rank—that is, the great kings—it is critical to recall that lesser polities engaged in similar tactics. Among themselves they exchanged letters, daughters, and gifts. The lesser ranking kingdoms of Ugarit and Amurru conducted such reciprocal relations, including several interdynastic marriages between the two states (Klengel 1992: 137, 141-42). What is rare is reciprocity between
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ranks, that is for Ugarit as a lesser kingdom to enter reciprocal relations with a great power. As a marker of rank, the presence of a foreign princess would have served as a major mechanism in any attempt at status enhancement. Further, one might postulate that the emulation or appearance of status, as is suggested by the presence of luxury objects at Ugarit, might help to boost a state’s perceived prestige. Ambiguity and Status in the Extended Amarna Period That the Ugaritic king should both want to increase his status and believe that he could do so is suggested by the awareness of and deference to status among the members of the international network. The pervasive concern with, knowledge of, and acknowledgment of status recurs both implicitly and explicitly in the letters, highlighting its centrality in diplomatic relations, as seen in the statement on gift exchange protocol quoted above (KBo I 14, recto 3-10). In one of the more blatant statements, Puduhepa, corresponding with Ramses II, wrote, ‘If you should say, “The King of Babylonia is not a Great King”, then my brother does not know the rank of Babylonia’ (KUB 21.38, obv. 55-56 = CTH 176; translation by Beckman 1996: no. 22E). The importance and self-consciousness of status among these rulers demonstrates the highly structured nature of the international network and suggests an awareness of negotiating or manipulating the system. As such, status is also recognized as relative and changing. Kingdoms lose ranking as ‘great’ or attain it through complex negotiations, military prowess and accepted participation in the reciprocal exchange system (Liverani 1990a: 71). The state of Assyria gained status through the defeat of Mittani, but required careful negotiations with Egypt and Hatti before being fully accepted as a ‘brother’ (Artzi 1978: 1997). An © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
early letter sent by Ashur-uballit of Assyria to the Egyptian king (EA 15) contains irregularities of structure and misconstructions of the established modes of address that illustrate the inexperience of the Assyrian king. A second letter (EA 16) carefully employs all the proper titles and salutations, demonstrating a new familiarity with international protocol and Assyria’s rising status. Although with the hindsight of the later Assyrian empire it may seem unlikely to compare the position of Ugarit to Assyria, it is worth remembering that in the fifteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Assyria was a vassal of Mittani, having less wealth, power and autonomy than Ugarit. The kingdom of Ahhiyawa, probably to be equated with some or all of Mycenaean Greece, seems to have fallen from the rank of great power, a status it apparently held in the early thirteenth century as indicated in texts from Hattusha that refer to the Ahhiyawan king as ‘my brother’ and include him as a participant in the royal gift exchange network (Güterbock 1983: 135-36; Bryce 1989: 300; Liverani 1990a: 227). The erasure of Ahhiyawa’s name from a late thirteenth century list of great kingdoms recorded in a treaty between Tudhaliya IV of Hatti and Shaushgamuwa of Amurru suggests a subsequent decline in status (CTH 105; Beckman 1996: no. 17: §11; Güterbock 1983: 13536; Bryce 1989: 304-305). Status changes and negotiations most often occurred on the peripheries and the interstices of the network, such as the highly contested zone of western Syria that lay between Egypt, Hatti, Mittani, and Assyria. The region of western Syria was geographically important because of its access to major trade routes at the intersection of both the north-south and east-west routes linking the eastern Mediterranean maritime channels with the inland caravan roads. Control over the kingdoms comprising western Syria, including the wealthy mercantile center of
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Ambiguous Identities Ugarit, constituted a primary concern for the great powers. The kingdom immediately to the south of Ugarit, Amurru, exemplifies the active strategies these smaller kingdoms enacted in their own quests for political betterment (Singer 1991). Although Amurru is poorly known archaeologically, textual evidence documents the maneuvers of its wily rulers, Abdi-Ashirta and his son Aziru. Aziru reveals himself as a master of manipulating the two great powers of Egypt and Hatti, claiming loyalty to Egypt while at the same time forging a treaty with the Hittite king Shuppiluliuma (Liverani 1983). Liverani (1983: 119-21) has stressed the use of verbal ambiguity in Aziru’s letters to Egypt as a primary component in his political ‘double game playing’ and has suggested that this ambiguity may account for the widely divergent interpretations by modern scholars of Amurru’s early history (Singer 1991: 143). Ugarit’s proximity to and intimate relations with Amurru, in addition to evidence that Niqmaddu II corresponded with both the Egyptian pharaoh and Shuppiluliuma, suggest that, at least during the reign of Niqmaddu II, Ugarit engaged in its own political maneuvers (Singer 1999: 624-36). The format and phrasing of Ugarit’s letters and treaties with the two great powers reveal rhetorical nuances that walk a line between the suggestion of parity and the reality of imbalanced relations (Zaccagnini 1990: 60). For example, in the Amarna letters to Egypt, Ugaritic kings, including Niqmaddu II, adopt a subservient stance in the first part of the salutations (‘I fall at the feet of the king, the Sun, my Lord’), but then wish the Egyptian king well using the formula generally reserved for equals (Singer 1999: 626-27). Aside from the ‘great kings’, only Ugarit, the kingdom of Tunip, and an independent Hittite prince wish the Egyptian king well (EA 44, 45, 49, and 59; Moran 1992: xxix and n. 83). These manipulations could be achieved because of the element of ambiguous meaning that © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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served as a primary mechanism by which change could be effected. Such active manipulation of the international network is seen elsewhere at Ugarit, as in the appearance of luxury objects executed in the international style that signaled membership into the ranks of the ‘great kings.’ A clue for understanding the imagery on the alabaster vessel can be found in the same letter in which the Egyptian king declared his country’s unwillingness to relinquish princesses (EA 4; Singer 1999: 625; for a recent discussion of EA 4 with a slightly different interpretation see Westbrook 2000). The Egyptian king’s refusal to give a princess in marriage did not deter the Babylonian king in his quest. He responded, ‘Someone’s grown daughters, beautiful women, must be available. Send me a beautiful woman as if she were your daughter. Who is going to say, “She is no daughter of the king!” ’ (EA 4; translation by Moran 1992). In other words, as long as she fulfilled certain expectations of being an Egyptian princess, specifically that she be a beautiful maiden, why shouldn’t she assume that identity when she is in a new context in Babylonia? Her identity was deemed mutable because it did not reside inherently in any of her features (apart from being a woman and being beautiful, that is a virgin—Troy 1986: 78), but rather was ascribed to her through external attributes and the actual process of exchange. One might compare this scenario with Brilliant’s (1991: 9) comments on identity and portraiture: Here are the essential constituents of a person’s identity: a recognized or recognizable appearance; a given name that refers to no one else; a social, interactive function that can be defined; in context, a pertinent characterization; and a consciousness of the distinction between one’s own person and another’s, and of the possible relationship between them. Only physical appearance is naturally visible, and even that is unstable. The rest is conceptual and must be expressed
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Thus, identity is most clearly conveyed through visual signs, which are unstable and might be manipulated. For a local and internal audience, deceptions of foreign identity might be relatively easily concealed through the symbolic coding of dress and ornament. An intriguing echo of this scenario of changeable identities is found much later in Herodotus (Pintore 1978: 57). Book 3 begins with an anecdote explaining why the Persian king Cambyses invaded Egypt at the end of the sixth century BC. According to Herodotus, Cambyses, on the advice of a disgruntled Egyptian physician, sent a messenger to Egypt to ask its king Amasis for his daughter in marriage. Amasis did not want to give his daughter to the Persian king, but neither did he want to anger the ruler of such a powerful state, and so, Herodotus goes on to say, ‘this is what he did: There was a daughter of the former king, Apries, …a girl tall and beautiful’. Amasis clothed this girl in finery and gold and sent her to Persia ‘as his own daughter.’ However, unlike the situation proposed by the Babylonian king 800 years earlier, Cambyses was not party to the switch, and upon meeting the young Egyptian woman found out the trick. She informed him ‘you do not grasp how you have been put upon by King Amasis. He decked me out in all this apparel, as though I were his own daughter whom he was giving to you’, thus propelling Cambyses to invade Egypt (Herodotus, Book 3.1; Grene 1987). Even the phrasing used by Herodotus parallels that used by the earlier Babylonian king, ‘as if she were your daughter’. Of relevance to our study of the alabaster vase image is the emphasis in Herodotus’s account placed on the changed apparel of the woman by which means she assumed the appearance of an Egyptian princess. As the daughter of an earlier Egyptian king, Apries, she was already a royal woman, but without blood ties to the current ruler her marriage would offer no political © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
benefit to Cambyses. Hence, her identity as an Egyptian princess was unstable. In both the Late Bronze Age and Achaemenid instances, visual forms coded multivalent and ambiguous messages regarding the identity of these women. It also appears fairly evident that what actually happened to these women once they entered a foreign king’s court might have little to do with the rhetoric of marriage and alliance put forth in the correspondence. Their identity and status, as an external manifestation, could be redefined to suit the interests of the receiving ruler. Several letters from the Mittanian king Tushratta to Amenhotep III address negotiations for a Mittanian princess—a daughter of Tushratta—to be sent to the Egyptian court (EA 19-22). EA 20, from Tushratta, quotes Amenhotep’s request for this woman, saying that his messenger ‘came to take my brother’s wife to become the mistress of Egypt’, indicating the expected high-status that the Mittanian princess would hold in the foreign court. From these letters, we also hear about an earlier marriage alliance between Amenhotep III and Tushratta’s sister, which was finalized while Tushratta’s father ruled (EA 17). This exchange sent Gilu-Hepa to Egypt, an event that is documented in Egyptian sources in quite different terms from those expressed in the international correspondence. Rather than celebrating the event as an alliance with an equal king through the marriage of his daughter, scarab inscriptions found in Egypt boast of the marvels that Amenhotep brought back from Mittani including Gilu-Hepa, identified only as the ‘daughter of the chief of Mittani’, along with 317 harem women (Bryan 2000: 80-82). Moreover, the royal titles used on the scarab inscriptions name Tiyi as the ‘great royal wife’. While stopping short of claiming Gilu-Hepa as tribute or booty, the mere implying of this would have bolstered the power of Amenhotep within his own state. This con-
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Ambiguous Identities trasts with his presentation of the same event to an external audience of royal peers as an interdynastic marriage alliance, which would have garnered prestige and status within the international community (Liverani 1990a: 276-77). Such recontextualizations provided opportunities for the negotiation of status and, when uncovered by other parties, were often met with resentment. While the Babylonian king writing in EA 4 made explicit his intended opportunistic use of the exchanged woman, in other instances contempt for such activity is evident. For example, possibly the same Babylonian king, Kadashman-Enlil, complained that chariots he sent to Egypt had been displayed along with the tribute of vassal states, thereby devaluing them and consequently lessening his status (EA 1, quoted by Amenhotep III; Liverani 1990a: 265; Liverani 1990b: 209-10). As with Gilu-Hepa, it appears that Amenhotep III was implicitly claiming to an internal Egyptian audience that these items were tribute from a vassal. In the same letter, Amenhotep responds to concerns of Kadashman-Enlil for the health of a Babylonian princess who was already settled in the Egyptian harem. Once again, we see the correlation between an exchanged woman’s mutable identity and a potentially changed status. Kadashman-Enlil, implying that the princess had died and a substitute had been installed in her place, wrote to Amenhotep saying, ‘Perhaps the [woman] my messengers saw was the daughter of some poor man, or of some Kaskean, or the daughter of some Hanigalbatean, or perhaps someone from Ugarit.’ Denying the accusation, Amenhotep replied, ‘Did you, however, ever send a dignitary of yours who knows your sister, who could speak with her and identify her?’ (EA 1; trans. by Moran 1992). In an ironic twist, the precise trickery that the Babylonian king proposed in EA 4 in order to acquire an Egyptian ‘princess’ © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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was bitterly resented when he suspected that the Egyptian king had done the same thing (Liverani 1990a: 274-75). The problems of identification based primarily on apparel and context come to the surface in this exchange. That such machinations took place on a fairly frequent basis seems confirmed by a close reading of the written evidence. Discussion and Conclusion An analysis of the representation on the alabaster vase fragments from the palace at Ugarit raises a series of questions. First one wonders whether this lady shown in Egyptian attire really was Egyptian or not. If she was not, then one assumes she was presented as if she were Egyptian. If, however, one accepts that she was Egyptian, a second set of questions arises from the iconography of her headdress and the intimate scene in which she participates: was she a royal princess, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh, or was she a member of the royal harem, a ‘royal ornament’? Despite our attempts, the textual evidence does not help us solve the dilemma. While EA 4 reports pharaoh’s statement as an absolute denial of any possibility of sending a princess abroad, the ‘ban’ does not necessarily extend to non-royal, palace-dependent women such as members of the harem. Moreover, the rebuttal by the Babylonian king that any Egyptian woman would be acceptable suggests that alternatives were available and actively pursued, and that the system was not as inflexible as the ‘rules’ might lead us to believe. The iconography of the lady’s apparel also frustrates attempts at identification. The headdress is unusual, and even within the large repertoire of Egyptian art it cannot be precisely connected with a specific social group beyond a general association with elite women. Yet it is an unambiguous marker of things Egyptian, as are the broad collar, tripartite wig and liba-
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tion vessel. In fact, I would argue that the excessive attention given to interpreting the meaning of the headdress has obscured the more important aspect of the overall ‘Egyptianness’ of the elegant lady.7 Such Egyptianness is reinforced in the depiction of the cornice, column capitals, and hieroglyphic inscription. An inherent non-Egyptianness emerges in the ibex frieze, which never occurs on a cornice in Egyptian examples, the Syrian features and hairstyle of the man, and the direct reference to the ruler of Ugarit. The central issue seems to be less whether she is or is not either Egyptian or a princess, but more the fact that she has been left unidentified, suggesting that the provision of a specific identity was either not possible or not desirable. I have suggested in this paper that our inability to identify the ‘cultural origin’ of the lady in question may be due to an indeterminacy consciously deployed in the imagery itself. The extended Amarna age represented a period in which metaphors of brotherhood and kinship served as ‘constitutive paradigms that affect attitudes to and conduct of international negotiation’ (Cohen 1996: 11). Entry into the ‘brotherhood’ was a crucial step not only in the acquisition of status, but more importantly that which resulted from this status, the ability to participate in the top-level diplomatic negotiations of the region. In the mid-fourteenth century, Ugarit, in a not-too-dissimilar position to Assyria, stood just on the periphery of the ‘club’, and the deployment of imagery that included ambiguous elements may have functioned as part of its maneuvers. While the scenario that I propose may not provide a satisfactory solution to some, it would be presumptuous of us to underestimate the subtlety of nuance and manipulation that the ancient patrons controlled in their artistic expression. We are not looking through a window onto an actual event, but through the proverbial filter of a carefully constructed realm of representa© The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
tion. Our own longing for tidy explanations and literal interpretations should not blind us to the slippery nature of visual imagery. When it was deemed necessary to convey an unambiguous message, as in the case of the explicit identification of Niqmaddu, it was done through a combination of text and image. Yet there are times when indeterminacy has its benefits, and political relations, even today, rely heavily on it. It is not clear what audience actually would have seen this vessel. As a small-scale portable item kept in the royal palace, it is likely that its audience was highly controlled, and I suspect that it was intended primarily for an internal Ugaritic audience. Nevertheless, one would predict quite different responses depending on the origin (and agenda) of the viewer. One imagines that if the depicted lady were a Syrian woman in Egyptian dress, an Egyptian viewer would know the ‘deception’ as in the case of the disappearing Babylonian princess who could not be identified in the Egyptian harem by Babylonian messengers (EA 1). However, the vagueness of images mitigates any specifically negative reaction, since an Egyptian viewer who knew there was no Egyptian lady at the Ugaritic court might feel pride in the evident desire of a ‘lesser’ polity to emulate the greatness of Egypt. Would officials of other ‘great’ powers who might see the vessel recognize any duplicity on the part of Ugarit? Certainly these courts had their ‘spies’ and received information about third party dealings (Meier 1988: 233; Cohen 2000), yet the lack of an explicit identification for the woman would undermine any direct accusations of false pretenses. For internal or local audiences, imprecise elements may have been fairly easy to cloak. We may never know with certainty who commissioned this work; although, it appears to have suited the interests of Niqmaddu in defining a representation of royal privilege, and I view him as the most likely candidate. One
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Ambiguous Identities might also speculate, perhaps again without ever finding proof, that had an Egyptian princess been granted in marriage to Niqmaddu by an Egyptian king, the fact would have been widely celebrated both by means of an inscription on this piece and in other documents. Situating a representation of Niqmaddu in an Egyptian-looking scene complete with an intimate portrayal of an Egyptian-looking lady signaled the Ugaritic ruler’s cosmopolitan position, without making an explicit claim to what would have been a highly unusual interdynastic marriage. Visual ambiguity derives its potency from the evidence that trappings (visual appearance) were primary markers of both identity and status. These outward, external attributes could be altered and manipulated, conveying imprecise messages that could imply a range of meanings. The body of the king’s wife, moreover, served as a prime carrier of the symbols of rank and was the perfect location for implied meaning, she being intimately connected to the king yet not the king.8 As Alan Schulman remarked in a footnote to his seminal article, ‘if Kadashman-Enlil was willing to pass off any woman as an Egyptian princess, who is to say that Niqmaddu was not unwilling to do the same?’ (Schulman 1979: n. 39). Acknowledgements The ideas in this article were first presented at the symposium, ‘Courtly Ambiguities: Harems and Gender in the Eastern Mediterranean’, held at the University of California, Berkeley on 4 March 2000. Subsequent versions were presented at the annual meetings of the American Research Center in Egypt and the American Schools of Oriental Research. I am grateful to those who provided comments after these talks, to several individuals who looked at drafts of the manuscript, in particular Gregory Levine and Leslie Peirce, and to the anonymous referees. For all their assistance during the period of my research, I would like © The Continuum Publishing Group Ltd 2002.
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to express my thanks to Dr. Abd al-Razzaq Moaz, Dr. Michel al-Maqdissi, and Dr. Sultan Muhesin of the Antiquities Department of the Ministry of Culture, Syria and Dr. Yves Calvet and the other members of the Mission de Ras Shamra, France. About the Author Marian H. Feldman is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her PhD in art history from Harvard University in 1998. She has excavated in Turkey and Syria and is currently writing a book on artistic interconnections, prestige objects and gift exchange during the Late Bronze Age. Abbreviations Used in Text/Notes CTH E. Laroche 1971 Catalogue des Textes Hittites. Études et Commentaires 75. Paris: Klincsieck. EA 1992 El-Amarna—with reference to the numbering of the texts (letters) in Moran 1992. Kbo Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköy. Berlin: Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft. KUB Keilschrift Urkunden aus Boghazköy. Berlin: Institut für Orientforschung. RS Ras Shamra—prefix for field numbers of tablets and other registered finds of the French Archaeological Mission to Ras Shamra (Ugarit). VA Prefix for objects from Vorderasiatische Staatlichen Museen, Berlin
Notes 1.
Compare the hairstyle with that of a victorious warrior on a carved ivory plaque from a furniture panel excavated in the palace at
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2.
3.
4.
5. 6.
7.
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Feldman Ugarit (Damascus Museum RS 16.56; Schaeffer 1954: pl. X). For some Egyptian examples, see Smith (1965: fig. 41 [tomb of Nebamun], and fig. 162 [Syrian ships at dock]). The concept of ‘ethnic’ groups has been the subject of many studies in recent years (e.g. Jones 1997), and the problems surrounding the use of the term have been highlighted. The gazelle protome has been associated with foreign (that is, non-Egyptian) princesses; however, it also appears with the platform crown worn by Sitamun on the larger chair from the tomb of Yuya and Tuya, where she is clearly identified as the daughter of the king. It should be noted that there is no connection between these gazelle heads (with their slightly S-shaped horns belonging to the antelope family) and the ibex heads on the top of the cornice (with backward sweeping horns and bearded chin of the goat family); for discussion and illustrations of Nubian ibexes and Dorcas gazelles, see Houlihan (1996: 58-59, 61, 109-112). Schulman (1979: 187) does present evidence for Egyptian princesses marrying abroad during periods of Egyptian weakness, such as during the Hyksos period preceding the New Kingdom and in the Third Intermediate period following. See same images as supra n. 1. The term ‘international’ is, strictly speaking, anachronistic for the Bronze Age, since ‘nations’ did not exist according to current definitions (Anderson 1991; Gellner 1983; and Hobsbawm 1992). More properly, it might be called ‘intercultural’. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous nature of the term ‘international’ and its widespread association with interpolity exchange best convey the desired connotation of a supraregional system. Thus, it is retained in this paper. I purposely avoid the passive connotations implicit in the term Egyptianizing here in order to emphasize the highly active inclusion of things Egyptian.
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8.
Compare with Troy’s (1986: 149-50) discussion of the Egyptian queen as representing the feminine aspect of a royal duality.
References Anderson, B. 1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Ori gin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edn. London: Verso. Arnold, D. 1996 The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Harry N. Abrams. Artzi, P. 1978 The rise of the Middle-Assyrian kingdom, according to el-Amarna letters 15 & 16. In P. Artzi (ed.), Bar-Ilan Studies in History, 2541. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press. 1987 The influence of political marriages on the international relations of the Amarna Age. In J.-M. Durand (ed.), La Femme dans le ProcheOriente antique. Compte Rendu de la 33e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 7–10 Juillet 1986): 23-26. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations. 1997 EA 16. Altorientalische Forschungen 24: 320-36. Barthes, R. 1977 Rhetoric of the Image. In Image, Music, Text, 32-51. New York: Hill and Wang. Originally published in French as ‘Rhetorique de l’image’, Communications 4 (1964). Baxandall, M. 1985 Language and explanation. Introduction to Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Expla nation of Pictures. New Haven: Yale University Press. Beckman, G. 1996 Hittite Diplomatic Texts. Society for Biblical Literature,Writings from the Ancient World Series 7. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press. Bissing, F. W. von 1940 Ägyptische und ägyptisierende Alabastergefässe aus den Deutschen Ausgrabungen in Assur. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasi atische Archäologie 46: 149-82. Bordreuil, P., and D. Pardee 1989 La trouvaille épigraphique de l’Ougarit. Ras
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