Семирамида: Легендарная царица Ассирии

Legendary queen of Assyria

Semiramis (/s//ə/'/m//ɪr//ə//m//ɪ//s//, //s//ɪ// //, //s//ɛ// /; Šammīrām, Σεμίραμις, سميراميس
Samīrāmīs, Šamiram) was the legendary Lydian Babylonian wife of Onnes and of Ninus, who succeeded the latter on the throne of Assyria, according to Movses Khorenatsi. Legends narrated by Diodorus Siculus, who drew primarily from the works of Ctesias of Cnidus, describe her and her relationships to Onnes and King Ninus. Armenians and the Assyrians of Iraq, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey, and northwest Iran still use Shamiram as a given name for girls. The real and historical Shammuramat, the original Akkadian form of the name, was the Assyrian wife of Shamshi Adad V (ruled 824 BC–811 BC). She ruled the Neo Assyrian Empire as its regent for five years, before her son Adad nirari III came of age and took the reins of power. She ruled at a time of political uncertainty, which may partly explain why Assyrians may have accepted the rule of a woman when it was not allowed by their cultural tradition. She conquered much of the Middle East and the Levant and stabilized and strengthened the empire after a destructive civil war. It has been speculated that being a woman who ruled successfully may have made the Assyrians regard her with particular reverence and that her achievements may have been retold over the generations until she was gradually turned into a legendary figure. even the Behistun Inscription of Darius. He knew her name because it was inscribed on a gate of Babylon. Various places in Mesopotamia, Media, Persia, the Levant, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Caucasus received names recalling Semiramis.

While the achievements of Semiramis are clearly in the realm of mythical Persian, Armenian, and Greek historiography, the historical Shammuramat certainly existed. After her husband's death, she might have served as regent for her son, Adad nirari III.

According to Diodorus, a first century BC Greek historian, Semiramis was of noble parents, the daughter of the fish goddess Derketo of Ascalon and of a mortal. He related that Derketo abandoned her at birth and drowned herself. Doves fed the child until Simmas, the royal shepherd, found her. Semiramis married Onnes or Menones, a general under King Ninus, and she became an advisor to king. Her advice led him to great successes. At the Siege of Bactra, she personally led a party of soldiers to seize a key defensive point, leading to the capture of the city. Ninus was so struck that he fell in love with her. He tried to compel Onnes to give her to him as a wife, first offering his own daughter Sonanê in return and eventually threatening to put out his eyes as punishment. Out of fear of the king, and out of doomed passion for his wife, Onnes "fell into a kind of frenzy and madness" and hanged himself. Ninus then married Semiramis. Diodorus related that after their marriage, Semiramis and Ninus had a son named Ninyas. After King Ninus conquered Asia, including the Bactrians, he was fatally wounded by an arrow. Semiramis disguised herself as her son so the army would follow her instructions, thinking they came from their new ruler. He wrote that her reign lasted for 42 years and that she conquered much of Asia and achieved many feats. She restored ancient Babylon and protected it with a high brick wall that completely surrounded the city. She built several palaces in Persia, including Ecbatana. She ruled Asia effectively and added Libya and Aethiopia to the empire. She went to war with King Stabrobates (King Supratika) of India, having her artisans build an army of false elephants by putting manipulated skins of dark skinned buffaloes over her camels to deceive the Indians into thinking she had acquired real elephants. This ploy succeeded initially, but then she was wounded in the counterattack and her army mainly annihilated, forcing the surviving remnants to re ford the Indus and retreat to the west. Diodorus mistakenly attributed the Behistun Inscription to her, now known to have been produced by Darius the Great. The writings of Diodorus about Semiramis are strongly influenced by the writings of Ctesias of Cnidus, but recent research suggests that his writings about Semiramis do not always follow those by Ctesias.

Legends describing Semiramis have been recorded by approximately 80 ancient writers including Plutarch, Eusebius, Polyaenus, Valerius Maximus, Orosius, and Justinus. She was associated with Ishtar and Astarte since the time before Diodorus. where her statue was shown with a golden dove on her head. The name of Semiramis came to be applied to various monuments in Western Asia and Anatolia, the origins of which ancient writers sometimes asserted had been forgotten or unknown. Nearly every stupendous work of antiquity by the Euphrates or in Iran seems to have ultimately been ascribed to Semiramis, even the Behistun Inscription of Darius. Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (born c. 330, died c. 391 – 400), who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity, credits her as the first person to castrate a male youth into eunuch hood: "Semiramis, that ancient queen who was the first person to castrate male youths of tender age". Armenian tradition portrays Semiramis negatively, possibly because of a victorious military campaign she waged against them. In one persistent tradition in this vein, the prayers of Semiramis are successful and Ara returns to life. During the nineteenth century, it was reported that a village called Lezk, near Van in Turkey, traditionally held that it was the location of the resurrection of Ara.

Although negative portrayals did exist, generally, Semiramis was viewed positively before the rise of Christianity. During the Middle Ages, she became associated with promiscuity and lustfulness. One story claimed that she had an incestuous relationship with her son, justifying it by passing a law to legitimize parent child marriages, and inventing the chastity belt to deter any romantic rivals before he eventually killed her. This was likely popularized in the fifth century by Orosius in his universal history, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, which has been described as an "anti pagan polemic". In the Divine Comedy, Dante places Semiramis among the souls of the lustful in the Second Circle of Hell. She appears in Petrarch's Triumph of Love, canto III, verse 76. She is one of three women exemplifying "evil love", the other two being Byblis and Myrrha. She is included in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio that was composed in 13611362. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature. Semiramis always was admired for her martial and political achievements. Her reputation partly recovered in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. She was included in Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, finished by 1405, and, starting in the fourteenth century, she was commonly found on the Nine Worthies list for women. such as Antonio Vivaldi, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Domenico Cimarosa, Josef Mysliveček, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Gioachino Rossini. Arthur Honegger composed music for Paul Valéry's eponymous 'ballet pantomime' in 1934 that was revived in 1992 after many years of neglect. In Eugène Ionesco's play The Chairs, the Old Woman character is referred to as Semiramis. It has been suggested that the poem Semiramis, possibly written in 1017 by Warner of Rouen at the court of Emma of Normandy's brother, Richard, Duke of Normandy, and dedicated to her brother, Archbishop Robert, is a contemporary satire ridiculing Emma's relation with her husband King Cnut. She was mentioned by William Shakespeare in Act 2 Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus and Scene 2 of the Induction in The Taming of the Shrew. Portrayal of Semiramis has been used as a metaphor for female rulership. Sometimes she is referenced during political disputes regarding rule by women, both as an unfavorable comparison, for example, against Elizabeth I of England, and as an example of a woman who governed well. The mother of the sultan in The Man of Law's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is compared to Semiramis, with the intention of suggesting that the mother of the sultan is an evil woman just like Semiramis. In the twentieth century, Semiramis has appeared in several sword and sandal films, including the 1954 film Queen of Babylon in which she was played by Rhonda Fleming. In the 1963 film I am Semiramis, she was played by Yvonne Furneaux. In John Myers's novel Silverlock, Semiramis appears as a lustful, commanding queen, who stops her procession to try to seduce young Lucius, who has been transformed into a donkey.

Despite a lack of supporting evidence in the Bible, the book The Two Babylons (1853), by the Christian minister Alexander Hislop, was particularly influential in characterizing her as the Whore of Babylon. He claimed that the head of the Catholic Church inherited and continued to propagate a millennia old secret conspiracy founded by Semiramis and the Biblical king Nimrod to propagate the pagan religion of ancient Babylon. but variations of them are accepted among some groups of evangelical Protestants. comic books, and related media. Critics have dismissed the speculations by Hislop as based on misunderstandings. Lester L. Grabbe has claimed Hislop's argument, particularly his association of Ninus with Nimrod, is based on a misunderstanding of historical Babylon and its religion.

The Semiramis InterContinental Hotel in Cairo is named after her. It is where the Cairo Conference of 1921 took place and was presided over by Winston Churchill. Semiramis appears in the Japanese light novel and anime series Fate/Apocrypha of the Fate franchise as the Assassin of Red. She also appears in the mobile game of the same franchise, Fate/Grand Order. Semiramis is an Italian progressive rock band who produced one LP in 1973, Dedicato a Frazz. Semiramis is mentioned in the song "Illuminati" by Malice Mizer. Semiramis is depicted as the estranged daughter of powerful Indian king Sthabarpati in the novel The Secret of the Druids by Christopher C Doyle, set in 2200 BCE. She attacks her father's kingdom and takes away the Amrita (nectar) hidden near the Afghanistan Tajikistan border. She abrogates her throne when she learns her son has conspired against her and she moves to Great Britain where she finally rests and is revered by the Irish as a Goddess.

Beringer, A. 2016. The Sight of Semiramis: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Babylonian Queen. Tempe: Arizona State University Press. Dross Krüpe, K. 2020. Semiramis, de qua innumerabilia narrantur. Rezeption und Verargumentierung der Königin von Babylon von der Antike bis in die opera seria des Barock Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.