the hassekies, or those who have a son living, are treated with marked respect, as in the natural course of events they maj become valide. I he title of sultan (for the Turkish has no distinc- tion of gender), though from courtesy it may be given to the hassekies, is, strictly speaking, ap- propriate only to the mi\ ereign's mother, and to the sons and daughters of the imperial family (Thornton, ii, 276; Urqu- hart, ii, 433). This state- ment, especially the last point of it. strikingly il- lustrates the view We
have taken as to the nmre queenly position of the fine's mother than of his wife in the Jewish
and other Asiatic courts.
It must be clearly un- derstood that this posi- tion is by DO mean- pe- culiar to the modern East, or to the Jews among the ancii nl < tri-
entals. lleercn. indeed. Ancient Egyptian QneeD.
ns7]
QUEEN
839 QUEENSFEKKY DECLARATION
thinks that the power of "the queen mother" was even more considerable among the ancient Persians than among the modern Turks (Hist. Researches, i, 400) ; and the narratives of Herodotus and Ctesias respecting the tyrannical influence exercised by Parysatis, Amestris, and others bear ample testimony to this fact. The care- ful reader of Scripture will easily be able to trace the same ideas respecting the position of the king's mother among the Israelites. In how marked a manner does the mother of Solomon come forward at the end of her husband's and the beginning of her son's reign ! She takes an active part in securing her son's succession ; it is in the conviction of her commanding influence that Adonijah engages her to promote his suit, alleging "he will not say thee nay ;" and then, when Bathsheba ap- pears before her son, the monarch rises from his place, advances to meet her, bows himself before her, and seats her on the right hand of his throne (1 Kings i, ii). That the king's mother possessed high dignity is fur- ther evinced by the fact that Asa found it necessary to remove his mother, Maachah, li from being queen," on account of her abuse of the power which that character conferred (1 Kings xv, 13). Jezebel was, as already stated, very powerful in the lifetime of her husband; but it is only under her son that she is called " the queen" (gebiruh) ; and the whole history of his reign evinces the important part which she took in public affairs (2 Kings ix, 22, 30, 37; x, 13). Still more marked was the influence which her daughter Athaliah exercised in Judah during the reign of her son Ahaziah, which was, indeed, such as enabled her at his death to set the crown on her own head, and to present the anomaly in Jewish history of a regnant queen (2 Kings xi). — Kitto; Smith. See Woman.
QUEEN OF HEAVEN. In Jer. vii, 18; xliv, 17, 18, 19, 25, the Heb. C^rrt rO^S, meleketh hash-sha- mayim, is thus rendered in the A. V. In the margin is given " frame or workmanship of heaven," for in twenty of Kennicott's MSS. the reading is r2X5"3, of which this is the translation, and the same is the case in four- teen MSS. of Jer. xliv, 18, and in thirteen of Jer. xliv, 19. The latter reading is followed by the Sept. and Peshito Syriac in Jer. vii, 18, but in all the other pas- sages the received text is adopted, as by the Vulg. in every instance. Kimchi says " X is wanting, and it is as if P.3X3"3 =' workmanship of heaven,' i. e. the stars ; and some interpret ' the queen of heaven,' i. e. a great star which is in the heavens." Rashi is in favor of the latter; and the Targum renders throughout " the star of heaven." Kircher was in favor of some constella- tion, the Pleiades or Hyades. It is generally believed that the " queen of heav- en" is the moon (comp. "siderum regina," Hor- ace, Carm. Sec. 35, and " regina coeli," Apul. Met. xi, 657), worshipped as Ashtaroth or Astarte, to whom the Hebrew wom- en offered cakes in the streets of Jerusalem. Hit- zig (Der Proph. Jeremia, p. (54) says the Hebrews gave this title to the Egyptian Neith, whose name in the form Ta-nith, with the Egyptian article, appears with that of Baal Hamman, on four Carthaginian inscriptions. It is little to the purpose to inquire by what other names this god- dess was known among the Phoenician colonists; the Hebrews, in the time of Jeremiah, appear not to have given her any special title. The Babylonian Venus, according to Harpocration (quoted by Selden, Be Bis Syris [ed. 1G17], synt. 2, cap. 6, p. 220), was also styled "the queen of heaven." Mr. Layard identifies Hera, " the second deity mentioned by Diodorus, with Astar-
PhoBuiciau Coin with Head of Astarte.
te, Mylitta, or Venus," and with the " ' queen of heaven,' frequently mentioned in the sacred volumes. . . . The planet which bore her name was sacred to her, and in the Assyrian sculptures a star is placed upon her head. She was called Beltis, because she was the female form of the great divinity, or Baal; the two, there is reason to conjecture, having been originally but one, and an- drogyne. Her worship penetrated from Assyria into Asia Minor, where its Assyrian origin was recognised. In the rock tablets of Pterium she is represented, as in those of Assyria, standing erect on a lion, and crowned with a tower or mural coronet, which, we learn from Lu- cian, was peculiar to the Shemitic figure of the. goddess. This may have been a modification of the high cap of the Assyrian bas-reliefs. A figure of Astarte found in Etruria represents her as winged (Rawlinson, Herod. ii, 404). To the Shemites she was known under the names of Astarte, Ashtaroth, Mylitta, and Alitta, according to the various dialects of the nations among which her worship prevailed" (Nineveh, ii, 454, 450, 457). It is so difficult to separate the worship of the moon-goddess from that of the planet Venus in the Assyrian mytholo- gy when introduced among the Western nations that the two are frequently confused. Movers believes that Ashtoreth was originally the moon-goddess, while ac- cording to Rawlinson (Herod, i, 521) Ishtar is the Baby- lonian Venus, one of whose titles in the Sardanapalus inscriptions is " the mistress of heaven and earth" (^see Onias. De C^m PC3B [Alt. 1666]). See Ashto-