Akkad, Alexander the Great, and Dietrich von Bern, she made,
by reason of her achievements and influence, a deep impression on the
popular imagination, and as these monarchs became identified in
tradition with gods of war and fertility, she had attached to her
memory the myths associated with the mother goddess of love and battle
who presided over the destinies of mankind. In her character as the
legendary Semiramis of Greek literature, the Assyrian queen was
reputed to have been the daughter of Derceto, the dove and fish
goddess of Askalon, and to have departed from earth in bird form.

It is not quite certain whether Sammu-rammat was the wife of
Shamshi-Adad VII or of his son, Adad-nirari IV. Before the former
monarch reduced Babylonia to the status of an Assyrian province, he
had signed a treaty of peace with its king, and it is suggested that
it was confirmed by a matrimonial alliance. This treaty was repudiated
by King Bau-akh-iddina, who was transported with his palace treasures
to Assyria.

As Sammu-rammat was evidently a royal princess of Babylonia, it seems
probable that her marriage was arranged with purpose to legitimatize
the succession of the Assyrian overlords to the Babylonian throne. The
principle of "mother right" was ever popular in those countries where
the worship of the Great Mother was perpetuated if not in official at
any rate in domestic religion. Not a few Egyptian Pharaohs reigned as
husbands or as sons of royal ladies. Succession by the female line was
also observed among the Hittites. When Hattusil II gave his daughter
in marriage to Putakhi, king of the Amorites, he inserted a clause in
the treaty of alliance "to the effect that the sovereignty over the
Amorite should belong to the son and descendants of his daughter for
evermore".[464]

As queen or queen-mother, Sammu-rammat occupied as prominent a
position in Assyria as did Queen Tiy of Egypt during the lifetime of
her husband, Amenhotep III, and the early part of the reign of her
son, Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton). The Tell-el-Amarna letters testify to
Tiy's influence in the Egyptian "Foreign Office", and we know that at
home she was joint ruler with her husband and took part with him in
public ceremonials. During their reign a temple was erected to the
mother goddess Mut, and beside it was formed a great lake on which
sailed the "barque of Aton" in connection with mysterious religious
ceremonials. After Akhenaton's religious revolt was ina