Women in Control: Deducing from Hittite Seal Impressions
An aspect of Hittite culture that has always drawn my interest is the role of influential women within it. That’s true despite its patriarchal structures. (The stone relief above shows two Hittite women feasting together to set the mood.) Now, Hittite seal impressions found at Carchemish, a venerable site in SE Turkey, identify another prominent Hittite woman, named Matiya.
Her seal indicates she was an administrator in this important city at the crossroads between the Hittite heartland and Syria. The article reporting these finds is somewhat oddly phrased (not uncommon with English in the Turkish press). Therefore, I’m not certain about the conclusions they state. But it seems clear that a significant number of the Late Bronze Age seal impressions found at Carchemish were hers. That frequency may occur as a random result of archaeological survival. But at the very least, these clay impressions of her seal reveal her position. For a period of time, she must have worked in a political/economic office of this vassal kingdom within the Hittite Empire. Perhaps she achieved a spot as a Bronze Age well-connected administrator and trade expert.
What I’d Like to Know and How
I’m hoping one of the scholars currently working with thousands of Hittite texts will recognize Matiya’s name from some passing reference. It’d be fun to learn details about this active woman’s life.
The names we most often know are scribes’ names because they identified themselves at the end of the “official” part of correspondence. They even attached at the bottom of tablets small personal messages addressed to their fellow scribes. Maybe two scribes had a bone to pick with Matiya or a favor to ask, and we’d learn about it from one of their added personal notes.
Women and Hittite Law
If Matiya’s seemingly unlikely job has raised your curiosity and you’re interested in the position of women under Hittite law, you can read my post about Hittite law and women, (focused on laws regarding marriage, adultery, and rape).
Hittite Seal Impression Styles
The article in the Daily Sabah, “Digs reveal seals of Hittite female administrator in SE Turkey” only includes a photograph of one of Matiya’s seal impressions, a lovely but fragmentary one showing a female head.
Hittite seals could be pictorial, like the fragment shown in the article, or contain primarily hieroglyphic symbols. These hieroglyphs shouldn’t be confused with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Anatolia used a Luwian hieroglyphic system of writing for visual displays of writing on monuments, seals and such.
Cuneiform is the other form of writing in the Hittite world. It’s used on the clay tablets for letters, treaties, and other documents. But also, it is often displayed around the outer edge of seals to identify the name and title of the seal’s owner. The seal in the photo, one of Queen Puduhepa’s (Tesha in my novels), has that combination of Luwian hieroglyphs in the middle, cuneiform around the outside. I sometimes refer in my fiction to the “winged sun disk” hieroglyph that you can see on this seal (and the line drawing below). It indicated in essence, “the royal family.” A major power statement.
As an author logo (and rubber stamp when signing books), I use a line drawing of a different seal of Puduhepa’s. Later in her life, when she ruled with her son, Puduhepa used a more pictorial seal, showing her on one side and her son under the arm of the Stormgod on the other. This seal also includes both cuneiform and hieroglyphs.
Leaving an Impression
Usually what archaeologists find are the clay impressions made by the seal, like those above. Here in this photo, is one of the rare finds of the metal seal itself. This one combines hieroglyphs around the king and cuneiform on the outer ring. At the time of its discovery, scholars had not deciphered the Luwian hieroglyphs. The dual writing gave a helpful start to that process. The writing identifies this as the seal of Tarkasnawa, King of Mira (a small kingdom in the region).
Interesting article on seals and women’s place in society at that point. Thanks.
It also gave me a little ‘Aha!’ moment in terms of the fact that nowadays as an author I should be creating a graphic ‘seal’ that I use for each series of books, and for that matter each book released with it’s number. I love reading things in order if I can get them that way.
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