| Every father is the son of a mother. While this would appear to be a commonplace, studies of patrimonialism as a political system in the ancient Near East have rarely considered its implications. Royal women, as objects of exchange and as agents of political action, played a central role in negotiations between Late Bronze Age states and in dynastic struggles within these states. The relative positions of royal men were shaped by their relationships to royal women.;In three case studies of texts from Ugarit, this dissertation elucidates the instrumentality and agency of women in the reproduction of royal households and in the formation of interdynastic alliances. The first case study considers Ugaritic letters from kings to their mothers. The letters reveal that royal women could maintain their positions as queens from the reigns of their husbands into the reigns of their sons. Furthermore, the forms of address and self-identification the king used in relationship to his mother suggest a reciprocity in their political status.;The second case study examines Hittite imperial verdicts concerning two pairs of royal mothers and sons. The first set of verdicts demonstrates that a royal woman's ability to maintain her tenure as queen after the death of her husband benefited both herself and her son. In the second set, a royal woman's loss of position as queen undermined her son's and her male kinsmen's positions.;The third case study analyzes the Hittite imperial verdicts and regional accords between Ugarit and Amurru that document the divorce, exile, and execution of the wife of the king of Ugarit. This woman, the daughter of a king of Amurru and a Hittite princess, embodied the intersection of imperial and interregional alliances across three generations. By stripping her of her status as a royal wife, daughter, sister, and mother, the king of Ugarit circumscribed the authority of her son and brothers and asserted his will within the Hittite imperial system.;Patrimonial rule depended on the political polyvalence of women. The royal "House of the Father" was not as a system revolving around one powerful man, but a network of alliances under constant negotiation by royal women and men. |
