 The previous presenters have given a great overview of the state of gender archaeology at our time. And I will present a very specific study of reexamining women's role in this case near Eastern prehistory. So mostly I'll be talking about this relief, the famous garden relief from the northern palace of Ashurbanipol, from Iraq, dated in 645 BC. Currently, the British Museum is described as one of the most remarkable, also most enigmatic subjects in Near Eastern prehistory. So what is depicted here is we can see the Assyrian king, a queen, attendance in the garden. This is the head of the Illamite King, whom Assyrian king has just defeated, handing on the tree in the garden. So looks pretty straightforward and happy, not really. And the question is, my question is, at least, who is the queen, who are her attendants, and what are they doing there? So as I am our historian by training, I hope to identify the queen through formal analysis and contextualization of her iconography, as well as to deconstruct the discourse of domination of the woman and through the woman as part of the Assyrian visual narrative or propaganda. And the debate usually surrounds the question of, is she Illamite or Assyrian? Scholars such as Yaviel al-Valasmon have argued that she is actually an Illamite queen, meaning the wife of this guy, unfortunately, based on written history of Ashurbanipol's capture of the Illamite queen, as well as the princes of Elam, and then bringing them to Assyria. Basically, these such kind of reliefs are found throughout Ashurbanipol's garden, showing the capture and transport of these Illamite subjects. And in this argument, basically, the Assyrian king is acting as a new protector and owner of these conquered Illamite women, whose husbands have now been subjugated and mostly killed by the Assyrians. Also, his argument is of stylistic elements in the queen's attire in this relief. They resemble as Illamite iconography. And I want to argue the opposite. So here is the statue of Kring Napirasu, which is an Illamite queen from, well, much earlier, but since there are very few representations of Illamite women and Assyrian women in general from that time, so it's hard to find contemporary evidence. But basically, Alvarazmoun is arguing that arguing of stylistic similarities between these two works, as well as between Illamite representations of the queen in general and the representation in this particular work. But if we look more closely of not only this image, but also other representations of the Illamite queen, we can see that in traditional Illamite representation, the garment is more closely fitting on the upper body, exposing the arms and overall four bosoms of the queen while having a widespread rim for the dress and lower body with very long fringes. While here in the relief in question, the whole garment is very stiff and straight fitting and de-emphasizing basically the form of the female body hiding the arms and the fringes are not really long but showing the feet instead. And then another argument that Alvarazmoun argued is that there are kind of tiny dots decorating the dresses in both Illamite representation and in the relief in question. But my argument is that these dots are not only found on the queen's attire but also on the king's attire. And as well as there are other stylistic parallels between their attire such as these dots lined between two parallel stripes here found vertically here and horizontally here to kind of form a harmony and almost count complementary image between these two royal figures attires that will make more sense if the Assyrians are just taking this Illamite iconography to put in their garment instead of for this queen herself to be Illamite. So basically in that sense, Assyrian the creation absorbing artistic influences from the regions conquered and the dress therefore becomes an epitome of the empire itself and maps Illamite iconography in this case the little round dots on the surface just like how the land of Ilam is now mapped onto the territory of the grand Plutonous Assyrian empire. Essentially an Assyrian queen wearing an Illamite inspired garment as a form of appropriation is more powerful as a visual image of dominance than just an Illamite queen wearing an Illamite or Assyrian garment. And then about Alvaro's most another point, we can look at how elite Illamite refugees are usually depicted in Assyrian imagery and they're usually depicted in kind of humiliated ways. This is the prince of the Illamite empire who was conquered and as the description shows it's not, he's not exactly a dignified figure in this image while here the queen is quite dignified, she is obviously lower occupied in lower position as the king but they're still kind of framed by both attendants in the grapevine into this kind of exclusive royal inviolable space that really elevates her position and celebrates her power. So a question that's not being asked before is if the queen is Assyrian could her attendants being Illamite and I think no one has really looked at attendants. So I was looking at all the, a lot of the reliefs of Illamite deportees especially both from various classes both like musicians and from higher women of higher class men and women of higher classes in the same palace and then, or the Assyrians are really specific about depicting their conquered subjects. So I've discovered that most of them, I mean, essentially all of the men and most of the ordinary women such as musicians or attendants wear this sort of headband with like kind of little knots sort of thing behind the hand and then relatively simple garments and however elite Illamite women wear this just kind of single round headband without the knots and more complex garments with such as here it's, or here we can see both clearly this is this is elite woman, elite Illamite woman who is deported but we can see that she is elite because there are no guards around here and then also she is carrying a very heavy water jar to feed her infant. We can see similarities between her garments here as well as garments for the attendants in this image. So my hypothesis is that could that be that these attendants in the Assyrian palace are actually elite Illamite female deportees who have not only their lands conquered but also they're being subjugated and their culture appropriated. So basically they not work for the Assyrian palace. And this kind of strategy of appropriation is not unique to human beings but also to objects for example we can see here Egyptian necklace that celebrates Assyrian palace conquest of Egypt's 25th dynasty as well as other like the Babylonian elements this lotus flower that he's holding are all kind of appropriated cultural objects. So these all speak to Assyrian palace visual message of his ability to access and take resources from other parts of the world. And so the key question is then what is she doing there? So if we look at all these iconographic echoes between the king and the queen such as decorative elements that I talked about, the postures that they're also being parallel he's lying horizontally and she's sitting very up straight vertically and then with the grape vines and the horizontal grape vines to be vertical pine trees and the table in the middle that occupies both the physical center of this sphere as well as kind of creating many more intersections of vertical and horizontal lines kind of cross shapes and that they give a visual impression of balance and stability which then translates into the balance and stability of the empire. And then if we look more closely at the queen's crown here we can see similar examples of such mural crown. This is a Shvani Paul's queen. Then not only further substantiates the argument that she is in fact Assyrian rather than Illamite but also suggests but also the iconography of fortified city walls here suggests the inviolability of the queen's physical being which then translates into the inviolability that of the empire. So we can say that the figure of the queen is emblematic of the land signifying not only territories but also in this case because we have the garden taking second count the garden landscape the signifying reproductive abundance. Here we have a lot of date trees which are traditionally codified as female because they need to be fertilized by human hand from male pollen trees in Assyrian visual representation only male rulers are seen doing that. So and the palm trees usually don't grow on Assyrian soil. So this is further visual message for the fertilizing power of the Assyrian man essentially because here if we consider palm trees and all these female attendants in the queen as visually equivalent passively waiting to basically potentially be fertilized. And then well it's hard to talk about reproduction without talking about sex. So well on the first on the one hand we have the historical association of to floral vegetable motifs and sex that's very abundant in Mesopotamian literature. And the second of all the king's position here lying on this bed is very unusual in Assyrian representation. We can see that there is well there's no he's only male in this scene there are no competition besides the head of the already dead man on this tree which not coincidentally is an Assyrian pine tree. So this tree is native to the land unlike these female palm trees. So it's another sign of domination here. And then if we look more closely we can see that the pattern lining the bottom of the queen's garment are the same sort of visual detail as the pattern lining the edges of the blanket. So here we might detect a sense of access and removal. So basically especially then given their position and given the king's reclining position this sort of you know where she, well the pattern will be touched when her garment is removed and the pattern will be touched when his blanket is removed sort of from an echo. The further strengthens this sort of intimacy where there's already very intimate exclusive space framed by the great vines and by the attendants. And the attendants are there fully at Ashabani post disposal if my hypothesis that they are actually illamite elite woman holds to them they are now at his disposal for labor and then potentially for sex to contribute to the economic and the reproductive abundance of the Assyrian empire instead of for illam. However, access is only to the queen. So this is for the continuation of the legitimate bloodline that everyone else is potentially accessible but not accessed. While only her she is in this exclusive space inhabited by this royal couple a space that embodies unity, prosperity and stability of the Assyrian empire. So thank you.