Puabi, the Queen

Mother of Ancient Queens

Her skull crushed into tiny pieces by the weight of millennia, Puabi lay in her final resting place, undisturbed, for 4,500 years. Dressed in beaded jewellery and laden with gold, a cylinder seal next to her was inscribed in the cuneiform script of ancient Mesopotamia, ‘Puabi, the Queen’.

In the patriarchal world of Sumer, Puabi appears to have been a ruler in her own right, as her name was not attached to that of a male ruler. And though the jury is still out, this might imply that Puabi was indeed the first female ruler in recorded history. Much like Hatshepsut of ancient Egypt who ruled a millennium after her, or Queen Elizabeth I, Puabi too once ruled alone, holding the symbolic branch of dates, in what were the world’s first civilised cities.

Changeless in a changing world, along with her grave were unearthed the stories of grisly mass murders in an ancient ritual of human sacrifice; servants, musicians, guards and animals who would serve Puabi in the afterlife as they had done in their years together in this ancient city of Ur, in present day Iraq. Killed by lethal blows to the head or sedated with poison in golden cups, her handmaidens were laid to rest in all their finery.

When the British archeologist Leonard Woolley started excavation at this site in 1927, its incredible findings sent waves of excitement through the modern world.

Agatha Christie, one of many who flocked to Ur, based her book Murder in Mesopotamia on this very site. She eerily writes, “I felt that the murderer was in the room. Sitting with us, listening. One of us.”

How did Puabi die? What were the thoughts going through the minds of her attendants once they knew their fate was sealed? Unlike Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries, these are answers we will never have. All we do have, is an ancient mass grave, in the vast desert plains in the Cradle of Civilization.