Queen Kubaba... the Sumerian tavern keeper
About 4,500 years ago, a woman rose to power and ruled one of the largest civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia.
It is not surprising that the Sumerian king list is full of men's names: Elim, Hadanesh and Zizi. But along with its male kings, the world's first known civilization also produced its first known female ruler: the Kubaba (also Kugh Bao or Ku Baba) who brewed and sold beer in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Kish.
The story of powerful ancient women often centers around Egypt, where Sobekneferu, Hatshepsut, and Cleopatra ruled during the reign of the pharaohs.
But Kubaba ascended to the throne of Sumer long before them, probably around 2400 BC. To be clear, she was a true queen—a reigning queen who ruled in her own right, rather than a queen consort, who is simply the king's consort.
The King List refers to her as Lugal (queen), not Eresh (queen consort). She is the only woman to hold this title.
What little we know about her comes from this list, a record of rulers that often blurs the line between history and legend.
Enmen-lu-anna, for example, is alleged to have ruled for 43,200 years. Kubaba's reign is more plausible, but she is still credited with ruling 100 years and is unlikely to be at the head of Sumer.
Kubaba Heritage
Her surname is longer than most, suggesting that ancient scribes found her particularly noteworthy. Next to her name it reads, “The barmaid, who laid the foundations of Kish.”
In Sumerian tradition, kingship was not linked to a permanent capital. It moves from one place to another, given to one city by the gods, and then moved, at will, to another place after a few generations. Before Kubaba, the only member of the Third Dynasty of Kesh, the monarchy had been settled in Mari for over a century. After Kubaba I moved to the kiosks. But Kish rose to prominence again with Kubaba's son, Buzer-Suin, and his grandson, Ur-Zababa, serving as the first two rulers of the city's fourth and final dynasty. (However, some versions of the king list do not show the existence of the Akshak lineage intertwined between Kubaba and her descendants.)
?How did Kubaba rise to power
One source claims, vaguely, that Kubaba "seized" the throne. A more detailed account of her rise to power comes from Widener's records, which is less a correct history than a "blatant piece of propaganda", in the words of Canadian Assyriologist Albert Kirk Grayson. Grayson wrote that "the whole point of the narrative is to show that those rulers who neglected or insulted [the god] Marduk or failed to bring fish offerings to the temple of Esagil had an unhappy ending."
According to the text, Kubaba feeds a fisherman and persuades him to offer his catch to Esagilla. Marduk's response was not surprising: "So be it," said God, "with this he entrusted to Kubaba, the tavern-keeper, dominion over the whole world."
That's right - the expenses of her campaign for world domination amounted to a loaf of bread and some water.
Coincidentally, bread and water (the ingredients of Sumerian beer) were the basis of her life before the king as well. It's tempting to imagine Kubaba's path from humble brewer to noble queen as a rags-to-riches tale, but barmaids were pioneering and respected.
Sometimes they were members of the nobility. Given that the people of Sumer cherished beer as a gift from the gods, it may be more accurate to view her as “a successful businesswoman with divine connections herself,” writes theologian Carol R. Fontaine.
Whatever made her fit to rule, it clearly made her unique among the women of Sumer.
In an empire that lasted more than 1,000 years, she was the only queen to rule without a man.
But later generations seem to have rejected this violation of gender roles, associating it with another supposedly unnatural combination of masculine and feminine. The birth of an intersex child became a bad omen for Ku-Pao who ruled the land, with the result that "the king's land will become desolate."
As Assyriologist Rivka Harris writes, “sitting on a throne was inappropriate behavior for a woman, just as a bearded woman was an unnatural phenomenon.”
Over time, it seems that human kaupapa faded from memory and divine connections took precedence. She appears to have been deified in the following millennium, during the Hittite period, as protector of the Syrian city of Carchemish.
However, the relationship between the god and the historical person is unclear, especially because Baba was the name of a Sumerian god, and the prefix “ku” means “sacred,” according to American archaeologist William F. Albright.
If the goddess stemmed from a true queen, her legacy extended beyond the fall of Sumer, all the way to the fall of the Hittites. After evolving into the Greco-Roman Cybele, or Cybe, the “Great Mother of the Gods” boasted worshipers until 3,000 years after her death – not bad for a waitress.
Source : websites