Was a 'Mistress Of The Lionesses' a king in ancient Canaan?

PhysOrg.com ^ | April 6th, 2009 | Tel Aviv University

[SunkenCiv]

The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler... Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman... have uncovered an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in female dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city. If true, they say, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region. The plaque itself depicts a figure dressed as royal male figures and deities once appeared in Egyptian and Canaanite art. The figure's hairstyle, though, is womanly and its bent arms are holding lotus flowers - attributes given to women. This plaque, art historians suggest, may be an artistic representation of the "Mistress of the Lionesses," a female Canaanite ruler who was known to have sent distress letters to the Pharaoh in Egypt reporting unrest and destruction in her kingdom... among all the correspondence by kings were two rare letters that stuck out among the 382 el Amarna tablets uncovered a few decades ago by Egyptian farmers. The two letters came from a "Mistress of the Lionesses" in Canaan. She wrote that bands of rough people and rebels had entered the region, and that her city might not be safe. Because the el-Amarna tablets were found in Egypt rather than Canaan, historians have tried to trace the origin of the tablets.

[SunkenCiv]

"A few decades ago"???? They were dug up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, IOW, over one hundred years ago. Great fact-checking, no? The Amarna archive of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform is the remains of the diplomatic correspondence of a couple (or at most, four) of the pharaohs of the Egyptian 18th dynasty.

[SunkenCiv]

Resuscitation by Mouth-to-Mouth Breathing
by Immanuel Velikovsky

In Ages in Chaos I have quoted from two letters of the great lady of Shunem. These two letters of the el-Amarna collection are the only ones written from Israel by a woman; she must have been a "great lady" if she corresponded directly with the pharaoh. As I could show conclusively, these two letters were written from Shunem; and the woman signed them Baalat-Ness, or "she to whom a miracle happened." From the appellation used in her letters to the pharaon it appears that the fame of the healing reached also the palace of Egypt.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Velikovsky is intense reading...

[SunkenCiv]

Um-hmm.

[stormer]

LOL.

[null and void]