Since studying history, I have retained my fascination for strong female leaders. Most female leaders were not only wise and powerful but also a rarity. Unfortunately, not much has changed, because female leaders are unique even today.
Last year I visited the British Museum in London and there I came across the history and jewelry of Queen Puabi. A very strong woman, a queen in the Sumerian Empire in Mesopotamia, whose intact grave has been filled with beautiful jewelry.
And I would like to introduce you to this Queen Puabi and her jewelry.
Queen Puabi lived around 2450 BC in Ur, which is now in Iraq, and which is also called Mesopotamia, which means land between the rivers. Those rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris.
The southern part of Mesopotamia, the old Babylonia, consisted of 2 parts. The southern part was called Sumeria, and that is where Queen Puabi lived. This is just to indicate which area we are talking about.
Just like Egypt, where the Nile was the lifeblood of the country, Mesopotamia also owed its fertile land to the annual floods of the Tigris and Euphrates. The country was rich because of its good agriculture and economic contacts with the surrounding countries.
In December 1927, an archaeologist Dr. Charles Leonard Woolley discovered an intact grave in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, which turned out to belong to Queen Puabi, who had reached the age of 40.
Apart from the fact that the grave was full of jewelry and other expensive grave goods, which an important person needed in the afterlife, Woolley found a cylinder seal on the chest of the woman in the grave.
On that cylinder seal was the name ‘eresh’, which means queen or priestess in the Sumerian language. There is no mention of a relationship with a man or father (‘wife of’ or ‘daughter of’), which you would expect, since she was a woman and at that time women’s emancipation had not penetrated society.
It is now assumed that she was the sole ruler of Ur, the queen in the First Dynasty of Ur. A very important lady.
Through that seal, in addition to the title, her name was also known, namely Puabi, which means ‘word of my father’ or ‘orchard of my father’.
Before we discovered the grave, hardly anything was known about Queen Puabi, about how she came to power and what her queenship brought to the country. So we have to rely on the finds in her grave to learn more about that time.
The jewelry in the grave shows what status she had, what techniques were available at that time, and what was considered ‘beautiful’ at that time.
But there was more than arouses surprise in our time.
At that time it was customary for personal servants of an important person to be buried with their master or mistress. In the burial chamber of King Puabi, three people were found, and nearby there were another 21 people.
In a somewhat larger burial pit, Woolley found another 74 servants, 6 men and 68 women, who all wore ornaments made of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli. It was noticeable that one woman wore more jewelry than the others.
These people were buried together with a horse, lions, and a cart. They probably poisoned themselves or were poisoned by others and then buried with their mistress. There is also evidence that some people had their heads smashed in with a kind of hammer.
My father always comforted me when I was once again confronted with the disadvantages of my (short) height with the words ‘Florence, it is about quality and not about quantity’. He could have said the same to Queen Puabi because she was only 1.22 meters tall (four feet) and lay on a beautifully decorated kind of bed in her tomb.
To look a bit nicer in the afterlife, there were thousands of gemstone beads and pendants, which were spread over her. The pendants were made in the shape of dates, which was the symbol of the kingdom, and apples. In Mesopotamia, apples were the symbol of fertility, happiness, and a long life.
In addition, there were vessels containing gold, silver, and precious stones. But the most striking and impressive was the headdress of Queen Puabi.
That headdress is heavy and dazzling. It contained 2.21 kilos of gold and consisted of 4 wreaths, made of 20 gold leaf poplars and willow leaves. The wreaths contained beads and pendants of gold, carnelian, and lapis lazuli.
12 meters of gold ribbons divided Queen Puabi’s hair into layers and the whole was supported at the back by a large gold comb decorated with seven gold flowers.
However, it is not clear whether how the headdress or diadem was placed in Queen Puabi’s hair was the original way to decorate the hair. It is more likely that Dr Woolley’s wife made this special creation with the available material or jewelry, inspired by the flappers, which were fashionable in the 1930s.
Around her neck, Queen Puabi wore a choker with a rosette in the middle. And around her hips was a beaded belt with a rim of discs.
Apart from the vessels the thousands of beads in the tomb, and the impressive headdress, Queen Puabi was covered in jewelry. She wore necklaces, chokers, and enormous earrings in the shape of a golden crescent moon.
Her upper body was covered with strings of precious stone beads and beads of gold and silver. She wore a ring on each finger. A diadem made of thousands of small lapis lazuli beads with two gold pendants, representing plants and animals, lay on a table near her bed, where she was laid out.
Dr Woolley also found a beautiful harp with a bearded bull’s head inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli, gold tableware, cylindrical beads of gold, carnelian, and lapis lazuli, which were used at that time for making necklaces and belts. And we are not there yet: in the tomb, there was a chariot decorated with silver lion heads, an abundance of silver, lapis lazuli stones, gold rings and bracelets, a belt made of gold rings, carnelian and lapis lazuli and some smaller jewelry.
The word shroud should not be taken too literally. The upper body of Queen Puabi was decorated or covered with a kind of blouse with a round neck falling wide to the hips, which was made of strings of beads.
These beads do not only come from Mesopotamia but have their origins in many parts of the world.
The long orange carnelian beads probably come from the Indus region (India) or were made by Indian craftsmen who ended up in Mesopotamia. The method of drilling the holes to make beads only occurs in the Indus region. Also, the special Ernestine drills, which were used to make the holes in the beads, only occurred in the Indus Valley or were brought to Mesopotamia by Indian craftsmen.
The material with which the dark blue lapis lazuli beads were made probably comes from Afghanistan and also the banded agates do not come from Mesopotamia but were imported as rough stone or already as beads.
All the material that was used to make the ‘shroud’ comes from outside Mesopotamia. This not only testifies to many trade contacts but also to sufficient prosperity to be able to pay for these materials.
Most of the long carnelian beads were found on the bodies of the maids, who were buried just at the tomb of Queen Puabi. These ladies wore a kind of golden hats of flowers, which can also be seen on unique terracotta statues, which were found in the Indus Valley, near Harappa (the city is now in Pakistan). As mentioned before, it is suspected that traders, craftsmen, and probably also these maids came from the Indus Valley and at some point moved to Mesopotamia.
Back to the carnelian beads. One was found on the hat of a man who was also buried at the tomb of Queen Puabi. The length of that bead is 61.54 cm and the hole was drilled with an Ernestine drill, which was used in the Indus Valley.
The shape of this long bead is not typical for the Indus Valley but probably comes from Gujarat (located north of Mumbai, on the Indian coast). The production of these beads was strictly controlled, only bead makers from the Indus Valley who emigrated to Mesopotamia could have made these beads.
And it is proof that at that time there was a good trading system to bring those beads and other goods from the Indus Valley to Mesopotamia. It is amazing what the discovery of carnelian beads in jewelry can reveal about what society was like at that time.
Between 1922 and 1934, the British archaeologist Dr Leonard Woolley worked on the excavation of (part of) approximately 1800 tombs, which were located in the Royal Cemetery in Ur. This project was sponsored by the British Museum in London and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
The discovery of the tomb of Queen Puabi was world news because it was intact and contained so many treasures, most of which were jewelry. This jewelry teaches us more about the time of Queen Puabi:
This story shows how important jewelry can be in finding out what society looked like at a certain time, what techniques were used, and what trade contacts were going on.
The jewelry also shows more about what was considered ‘beautiful’ in 2450 BC and what a lady of high status wore. And from what we have found, she had excellent taste. A bit excessive perhaps, but she was consistent in her use of colour.
Would you like to know more about which jewelry would suit you best, and which jewelry can make you even more beautiful than you already are? And which jewelry you should avoid. Then request the free PDF, which is full of great tips that you can start using right away.
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