Angry Goddess

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“Adad-guppi was the mother of the last Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus (556– 539 BCE) and most details about her are known from a pseudo-autobiographical text, which was most probably composed after her death. The text, written in the first person, informs us about the long life of Adad-guppi. The text emphasizes her special relationship to the moon good Sin, to whom Adad-guppi dedicated her life:

When in my dreams his hands were set (upon me), SÎn the king of gods spoke to me thus: “The return of the gods is because of you. I will place the dwelling in Harran in the hands of Nabonidus your son. He will construct Ehulhul and make perfect its work.”(Svärd 2019: 56 )

Earlier, the text recounted that the city of Harran was destroyed in 610, the destruction that made it necessary to reconstruct or at least to renovate the temple Ehulhul. It is not the king himself who receives the dream about his divine mission, but the dream is revealed to his mother who takes the role of a mediator between the god and her son. The reason for stressing the role of his mother might be that Nabonidus seemingly had no right to the throne through his paternal line, so he focused on his wise mother who had closer ties to his predecessor on the throne. Although Adad-guppi was not the daughter of one of the earlier kings, she claims to have had such a close relationship to the former kings that they elevated her to the status of a daughter. She repaid this treatment by taking care of the offerings for the kings after their deaths. 

According to her autobiography, Adad-guppi played an important role as an advisor and supporter of her son, the king Nabonidus. There was not much reason for her son to exaggerate the role of his mother after her death, so her assertion is likely correct.”

Agustina de Aragón, Casta Álvarez and other heroines of the siege of Zaragoza

In 1808, the Spanish city of Zaragoza was besieged by the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Peninsular war was raging as the Spanish people resisted the French occupation. 

Women distinguished themselves in defense of their homes. One of them was Agustina Raimunda María Zaragoza Doménech (1786-1857), also known as Agustina de Aragón.  

“The archaeological, iconographic and textual sources thoroughly assessed in this book show unequivocally that the idea of the armed woman was not at all foreign to the population of the Viking world, and that such women warriors may have really existed. Some perhaps died during their first encounter with the enemy, others might have lived to see more than just one battle, while others yet might have engaged in armed conflict in indirect or symbolic ways, devising strategies, orchestrating the construction of defensive architecture, performing magic spells intended to influence the outcome of the fight and so on. 

Regardless of the different scenarios of their lives, this does not make such women in any way lesser than their male Viking counterparts. What is remarkable about them, however, is that these same women probably engaged in a whole plethora of other activities, which ranged from performing various domestic chores, raising children and taking care of animals to craftsworking, trading and travelling. In trying to reconstruct their lives, let us therefore abstain from seeing the armed women of the past merely as ‘warriors’, ‘sorceresses’ or ‘functional sons’, but let us embrace them as humans with all their wonderful complexities and contradictions.”