What if some of history’s earliest kings were really queens?

Rising from the alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq, the ancient city of Ur flourished more than 4,000 years ago. One of the world’s earliest experiments in urban life and centralized power, its rulers commanded far-flung trade networks, constructed monumental architecture, and oversaw complex religious institutions. Ur was continuously occupied for more than three millennia before the Euphrates River retreated and the advancing desert swallowed the city. The rulers of Ur represent some of the oldest evidence of monarchy, replete with opulence and violence.   

When British archaeologist Leonard Woolley excavated the royal cemetery of Ur between 1926 and 1934, he discovered burials packed with riches. Tombs overflowed with gold and silver vessels, precious jewelry, and carved cylinder seals that acted as signatures for elites. More grimly, there was evidence of human sacrifice in the form of dozens of attendants dressed in rich court regalia laid out in a tableau, one with her fingers still wrapped around her harp strings.  

As Woolley documented the grave goods and skeletal remains, which dated to between 2600 and 2450 B.C., he also noted some curious finds. One skeleton, paired with weapons, appeared to be female; another was identified as female but surrounded with the ritual trappings of rulers, including gold daggers, crowns and diadems, royal cylinder seals, stone architecture, and human sacrifices; and some inscriptions raised questions about female status and authority.  

Some of the most lavish burials appeared to belong to women, and these women were buried in ways that early archaeologists usually associated with kings. Only three of the 16 royal tombs from the cemetery contained male remains that may have been the principal occupants of the tomb (as opposed to sacrifices), and these stood out as “markedly smaller than the rest of the royal tombs and the furnishings were far from opulent,” according to P.R.S. Moorey, an archaeologist who wrote about the discoveries in the 1980s.  

Woolley and the scholars who followed him assumed that the women in these royal burials were consorts and that their husbands, though their physical remains were lost, were the men attested as kings in Early Dynastic texts from outside the royal cemetery. Their belief that early kingship in Mesopotamia was inherently male was pervasive, guiding their interpretation of the archaeological discoveries at every turn. Women, the thinking went, could simply not have ruled Ur.  

But what if that wasn’t the case? Archaeology is shaped by the questions it asks; changing the questions can sometimes result in radically different interpretations of evidence. See how Ivory Man, a high-status individual from the Iberian Copper Age, was renamed Ivory Woman after advanced DNA analysis showed her to be female. Similarly, recent scientific reevaluations have revealed that some graves of ancient warriors across the world belonged to women who had been initially misidentified as men. Amy Gansell, a professor at Saint John’s University, points out that Woolley’s narrative is filled with “fluffy, outdated, and sometimes biased assumptions.” Many of those assumptions have become “entrenched” and “passed down as plain fact, especially as [Woolley’s] lore filtered through the mostly male profession of archaeologists, archaeology professors, and curators.” One cylinder seal, for example, possibly identified a woman named A-su-sikil-am as the primary ruler (lugal) and her husband as her consort. 

Independent archaeologist Kathleen McCaffrey, who specializes in gender and religion in the ancient Near East, asks a different question about the burials at Ur. She’s reexamining the archaeological record in the light of a century’s advances in the field, including innovations in forensic technology and a growing body of scholarship on gender at that time. 

What happens when we stop demanding that evidence conform to the expectations of 20th-century archaeologists? McCaffrey and others are reconsidering finds in a field that has long treated women as passive rather than active participants in past cultures. The question, McCaffrey says, of why some Sumerian women were buried like kings has a rather simple answer: “Because they were kings.” 

(The graves of 'woman warriors' are changing what we know about ancient gender roles.)

The power of priestesses 

One of the world’s first cities, Ur was established around 3800 B.C. near the fertile delta where the Euphrates River then met the Persian Gulf, a prime port location. Part of the Sumer civilization, a network of city-states that shared cultural practices and religious beliefs, Ur distinguished itself as a hub for trade. Luxury goods poured into the state: lapis lazuli hauled in from northeast Afghanistan, pure copper from Oman, and bright silver from Turkey and western Iran. A massive ziggurat, or stepped temple, dedicated to the powerful moon god rose in the heart of the city. Like all Sumerian city-states of the era, Ur was a theocracy. Political and religious authority were inseparable, and rulers derived their legitimacy directly from the gods they served. The temple wasn’t just a religious institution; it was a major economic and political power, controlling vast tracts of land and resources. 

That fusion of divine and earthly authority created conditions that may have facilitated women’s access to power in Ur. Records from the Early Dynastic era are sparse, but we know that in later Sumer, each city’s patron god could be ritually married to a human of the opposite sex, who then became their high priest or priestess. This was a position of immense religious, political, and economic power in any city-state, and the high priestesses at Ur dominate the historical records. Being a high priestess was arguably the most powerful position a woman could hold in ancient Sumer, and the role persisted for more than 500 years. One priestess at Ur, a woman from the Sargonic era (circa 2334-2150 B.C.) named Enheduanna, wrote influential texts that are still read today, an astonishing record of lasting political and cultural impact.  

Julia Asher-Greve, who focuses on Near Eastern archaeology, wrote that “there are grounds to doubt that Sumerian social structure was strictly patriarchal, because accession through the female line was possible, and women occupied high positions in states, economy, and cult, could be head of a family, and had substantial legal rights.”  

Though the rights and status of women varied across the region and throughout the centuries, Asher-Greve described the period as a “golden age for women.” She argued that this period in Mesopotamian history “yielded such rich and varied material on women as the Early Dynastic period. Numerous women of different social status are named in written records, or are represented on reliefs, seals, and other objects, or in the form of statues.”  

Further evidence of women in power derives from their titles: nin and en. Asher-Greve noted that “some scholars suggest women with the title nin may have governed in their own right,” a contention shared by McCaffrey. En carried both political and religious weight; it initially distinguished the earliest Sumerian rulers and later represented the high priests and priestesses of Sumer’s great temples. Sumerian language lacks grammatical gender, and en is the single word for priest/priestess regardless of gender. 

These threads weave a society in which women could have been accepted as primary rulers who were backed by divine and earthly authority and buried with resources that reflected their status.  

McCaffrey decided to revisit the tombs at Ur after women at the nearby Bronze Age site of Umm el Marra were unearthed with grave goods traditionally considered male, like weapons and men’s headgear. The find was a revelation, leading McCaffrey to reconsider the inconsistencies Woolley noted between the tombs of elite women and men interred in the royal cemetery. As she did so, three women stood out: Queen Puabi, an unknown queen buried in Royal Tomb 1054, and Queen A-su-sikil-am. 

Queen—or King—Puabi 

Puabi’s claim to power is the most visible. Though thousands of years of intrusive burials, grave robbing, and environmental wear have taken their toll on Ur’s royal cemetery, Puabi’s tomb is the most opulent one to have survived intact. Woolley described her burial chamber as arrayed with “an amazing wealth of offerings, vessels of gold, silver, copper, clay, and of such stones as white calcite, steatite, obsidian, and lapis lazuli; silver heads of lionesses from a piece of furniture, gold drinking-tubes, gold saws and chisels, an inlaid game board.”  

In the burial chamber lay Puabi herself, a petite woman just under five feet tall who died around the age of 40. From the crown of her head down to her knees, Puabi was covered in gold and precious stones. Her headdress was composed of hundreds of carefully wrought pieces. Long, looping golden ribbons lay a foundation for multiple wreaths of delicate gold leaves and gemstone flowers; a diadem of overlapping gold rings shimmered just above her eyes; and an elaborate gold comb was adorned with seven gold rosettes that would have trembled with every movement. She also had an exceptional cape made entirely of beads: gold, silver, agate, carnelian, and lapis in long strings that would have sparkled and shimmered around her. Pins, earrings, bracelets, rings on each finger, a large gold and lapis lazuli belt, and even a garter of gold and precious stones tied at her knee further adorned her.  

Gold daggers and multiple cylinder seals were found at her side. One of these seals carried her name and a royal title to accompany her into the underworld.  

Like the other royals in the cemetery, Puabi was ushered into the afterlife by human sacrifices. Three human attendants rested in her burial chamber, and 21 more reposed in the adjoining death pit. The death pit presented an elaborate scene. Five men with copper daggers appeared to guard the entrance ramp. Two oxen pulling a chariot and accompanied by five humans occupied the center of the pit, while an additional man appeared to guard a wardrobe out of which spilled gold and silver bowls and cups, silver lion heads, and an inlaid shell cosmetic box. At the opposite end of the pit, the skeletons of 10 women sat in two neat rows, each wearing an elaborate headdress and some carrying musical instruments.  

Impressed by the tomb’s splendor, Woolley noted that “the richness of the death-pit attached to the ‘King’s Grave’ was nothing compared to this.” Later scholars have grasped for explanations that might justify why this woman received such an extravagant burial. “Were the women in these graves invariably royal wives, or was there some other rank among the royal ladies that entitled them to burial with victims?” puzzled one scholar in the late 1970s.  

While Woolley’s team was the first to note that Puabi’s cylinder seal identified her name and title but failed to mention a husband, they did not seem to assign any particular significance to this omission. Instead they hypothesized that Puabi’s husband was the lost king in a neighboring grave dubbed the King’s Grave. Since then, scholars have proposed numerous theories to explain it, arguing variously that Puabi was the wife of a king who wasn’t named on her seal (multiple candidates have been proposed for her husband), the high priestess married to the moon god, or, more recently, that she may have ruled independently.  

Starting in 2008 McCaffrey took the debate in a new direction, arguing that Puabi could have been a primary ruler, an important a religious figure, and a wife without impairing her ability to fulfill any of those three roles. Further evidence pointing at potential rulership was found on Puabi’s seal, which bore the title nin, which was often translated as “queen” or “lady” but, crucially, could also designate an independent ruler, a ruler’s wife, or a title for male gods, suggesting that it denoted authority by itself rather than by relationship to a man. McCaffrey reads Puabi’s nin as a designator of rulership, not marriage. She further points out that “principals were not recovered from the largest royal burials and, while a male default has always been presumed for the grandest Ur tombs, the sumptuousness of Puabi’s chamber does not support that default.”  

Most elite burials in Ur’s royal cemetery lack the clear remains of a primary occupant, leaving the gender of the deceased open to question. The so-called Great Death Pit, a mass burial in the royal cemetery that contained the largest number of human sacrifices (73 in total), was originally attributed to a king whose burial chamber was believed to be destroyed in antiquity. More recently, anthropologist Aubrey Baadsgaard argued convincingly that the primary burial was a woman distinguished from the sacrificial victims around her by the opulence of her jewelry and grave goods rather than an adjoining burial chamber. Further investigation of this theory by archaeologist Richard Zettler revealed a cylinder seal inscription that may link this woman to the powerful priestesshood, adding further evidence that women commanded the most lavish burials of the cemetery.  

‘The seal cannot be hers’ 

The second prospective female ruler’s name eludes us, but her Early Dynastic grave from the royal cemetery at Ur, Royal Tomb 1054, was described by Woolley as “the most complete example preserved to us of a royal tomb.” The central figure interred in this remarkable burial, she held a gold tumbler in her hands and was richly bedecked in gold and gems of the same style as Puabi. Like Puabi, she too was buried with significant cylinder seals, including one made of solid gold attached to her garment with a unique gold and carnelian pin. Two daggers and a seal inscribed “King Mes-kalam-dug” were unearthed as Woolley opened the grave. He recorded his confusion at finding that “as the principal occupant of the domed tomb is a woman, the seal cannot be hers.”  

As McCaffrey points out, Woolley’s explanation has gone largely unchallenged, and for her, that is revealing. Instead, scholars argued over his suggestion that the seal was an offering from the woman’s husband. Some accepted the idea; others rejected it. But none of them questioned the assumption that because the tomb’s principal was a woman, the royal seal and daggers could not be hers. That assumption, she argued, is where the bias lives. If one begins from the premise that only men own royal seals, then a royal seal in a woman’s grave can only be a man’s possession out of place. This quietly shifts the burden of proof onto anyone who would claim it for a woman. 

The name on the seal, Mes-kalam-dug, further complicates the picture. It had been found in two different tombs from the cemetery: this royal tomb where it was accompanied by a royal title and a private grave where it wasn’t. Scholars, including Woolley, have suggested that these are two different individuals, one a king and the other a nonroyal namesake of that king, but it has been a subject of some lively debate over the past century. As for how a male king’s seal came to be in a woman’s tomb, McCaffrey notes that it could have circulated for generations as an heirloom before its burial. Indeed, several tombs in the royal cemetery contained objects that would have been historical or even ancient to the people they were buried with, since interment with heirloom objects was common during this period in elite burials. The unknown queen was also accompanied by four human attendants, a reflection of her power over the lives of others.  

The last of the potentially sovereign queens is A-su-sikil-am. Evidence of her survived in the badly looted and decayed Royal Tomb 1050, where her name was found inscribed on a cylinder seal with that of her husband. This unusual inscription was footnoted by its 1934 translator for its oddity: “If the columns are read in the usual way ... we have A-su-sikil-am king of Ur; A-kalam-dug [his/her spouse]. We should, however, have expected A-kalam-dug to be a king’s name, and A-su-sikil-am ... the name of a royal priestess.” The translator concluded that the original scribe must have made several mistakes in his or her composition, and that the text, though carved with precision, should be read scrambled across lines and out of order so that the masculine name could be associated with the title of ruler.  

McCaffrey suggests that the inscription on this cylinder seal, a precious object that would have been worked on only by the most talented artists and scribes, means exactly what it says: A-su-sikil-am was the primary ruler, with her husband acting as consort rather than ruling as king.  

What is more likely, McCaffrey asks: that a royal scribe incorrectly wrote the names and titles of his rulers—the two most powerful people in Ur—or that modern scholars contorted their translations?  

(The forgotten Egyptian queen who dared use forbidden 'magic' to make herself pharaoh)

Queen of queens 

Woolley named one tomb the King’s Grave, but it never yielded a king or even an inscription of one. The burial chamber of the royal occupant was looted and the skeletal remains lost or destroyed millennia ago. The overall opulence of the tomb and large number of weapons it included were read at the time as indicative of male kingship, although we now know that these are also features of elite female burials. Like Puabi’s tomb, the King’s Grave offered a clear stone architectural structure, armed soldiers guarding the entrance, elaborate wooden chariots with their human and animal attendants, richly attired musicians carrying instruments inlaid with precious stones, a death pit containing additional human sacrifices, and gold and silver inlaid weapons.  

Male bodies have been discovered in the royal cemetery, but none where kingship is certain. Of Woolley’s 16 royal tombs, only three preserved a principal believed to be male. One held a skeleton identified as a 40-to-50-year-old man, while the other two held bone fragments identified as male but decayed beyond the point of confident interpretation. All three were small, single-chamber graves, none of which carried royal titles or any inscriptions. The grandest tombs, the ones long presumed to hold kings, surrendered no male principals at all. 

This gap between presumption and reality is McCaffrey’s real target. Her point is not that rulership of Ur was an exclusively female tradition, or that every richly buried woman was a sovereign ruler. Rather, she shows that inconsistencies in the archaeological record are the result of modern biases clashing against historical evidence. “The traditional approach to gender-related questions has produced convoluted explanations for anomalies that do not exist,” McCaffrey wrote.  

McCaffrey is one voice in what Amy Gansell frames as part of “a conversation that feminist archaeologists and anthropologists have been building for decades.” Megan Cifarelli, professor emerita at Manhattanville College and a consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, explains that the “useful takeaway” is the “notion that the persons identified as women did not play a secondary role to those identified as men, and their access to wealth and status was not derived from their relationships to powerful men but was directly related to their own social roles.” She, however, questions McCaffrey’s identification of the women as “kings,” but agrees that these three women “wielded extraordinary power.”  

Whether the women of Ur ruled as kings or queens, or exercised power in a manner that defies easy modern categorization, it’s clear that there’s more work to be done to uncover the stories of ancient women. Gansell likens that process to a meticulous excavation. “Fundamentally, we still have to elevate these women back to the level that they had in antiquity when they were recognized,” she explains. “I think of it archaeologically,” Gansell continues, drawing a parallel between what Woolley and his team discarded, both literally and metaphorically. “They pulled out exciting artifacts and tossed the loose dirt onto what they called spoil heaps.” They also “threw female power into those heaps as well. Now we’re going back and sifting through their discard piles to find these women and put them back on their thrones.”