Description
This publication explores the meaning, functions and representations of royal feminine power across the ancient world to the present day.
In the ancient Mediterranean and West Asian worlds, queens and royal dynastic women, including Arsinoe II, Ada, Naqia and Cleopatra VII, maintained power through their artistic portrayal, their cultural patronage and their relationship with cult worship. Ancient Queenship: Art, Power, and Presence recovers the lived experiences, responsibilities and public personas of dynastic women. Sources drawn from the first millennium BCE to today question our assumptions on queenly status, and ask us to reconsider who holds power, to examine how histories are created and altered, and to foreground the often unexplored narratives of royal women.
The volume looks at how the theme of queenship has been “re-owned” and repositioned over time by creating conversation between ancient objects and artworks and ephemera dating from the 15th to the 21st century. These dynamic visions of ancient feminine power occupy new contexts in contemporary popular culture.
Ancient Queenship features over 60 artworks drawn from international museum collections, and includes a specially commissioned piece by contemporary artist Maryam Yousif.
Edited by Ainsley M. Cameron, Patricia Eunji Kim, Anastasia Tchaplyghine and Sarah E. Wenner
Contributions by Sheila Ager, Solange Ashby, Katherine Blouin, Sara E. Cole, Amy Gansell, Rose Hairane, Francis Joannès, Adrienne Mayor, Sabine Müller and Brandi T. Summers
Author biographies
Ainsley M. Cameron is the curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art and Antiquities at Cincinnati Art Museum, OH
Patricia Eunji Kim is assistant professor at New York University, senior editor and curator-at-large at Monument Lab and guest curator at Cincinnati Art Museum, OH
Anastasia Tchaplyghine is curator for Mesopotamia at The British Museum, London, guest curator at Cincinnati Art Museum, OH, and registrar for the University of Pennsylvania’s Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program at Nimrud and Nineveh
Sarah E. Wenner is provenance researcher and object historian at Cincinnati Art Museum, OH, and assistant professor at the American Center of Research, Amman, Jordan
Table of Contents
- Director’s Foreword by Cameron Kitchin
- Curatorial Acknowledgements by Ainsley M. Cameron
- Chronology of Queens Represented
- Timeline
- Introduction by Ainsley M. Cameron, Patricia Eunji Kim, Anastasia Tchaplyghine
- Essays and Plates
Portraying the Queenly Body - Portraits of Queens, Portrayals of Power by Patricia Eunji Kim
- Timeless Icons: Ancient Assyrian Queens as Empowered Beauties and Bodies of Empire by Amy Gansell
- Body Politics: Representing Cleopatra VII in Modern and Contemporary Contexts by Katherine Blouin
- Catalogue Entries 1-16
Roles of Queenship - The Economic Power of Mesopotamian Queens by Francis Joannès
- Warrior Queens in Antiquity: Myth and History, Folklore and Fact by Adrienne Mayor
- The Kinship of Hellenistic Queens by Sheila Ager
- Catalogue Entries 17-32
Divinity and Queenship - Divine Queenship in the Land of Kush by Solange Ashby
- Divinity and Queenship: Hellenistic Queen Cults by Sabine Müller
- The Aesthetics of Shine: Divine Afterlives of Queenship from Ancient Assyria to the Afro-Future by Anastasia Tchaplyghine and Brandi Thompson Summers
- Life After Life: Creating Connections with the Queen of Sheba by Sarah E. Wenner
- Catalogue Entries 33-49
- Conclusion by Ainsley M. Cameron
- Notes to Essays
- Notes to Catalogue Entries
- Bibliography
- Index
- Image Sources
- Author Biographies
