20 Facts About Semiramis

1.

Semiramis was the mythological Lydian-Babylonian wife of Onnes and Ninus, who succeeded the latter to the throne of Assyria, as in the fables of Movses Khorenatsi.

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2.

Semiramis was the ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as its regent for five years before her son Adad-nirari III came of age and took the reins of power.

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3.

Semiramis conquered much of the Middle East and the Levant and stabilized and strengthened the empire after a destructive civil war.

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4.

Name of Semiramis came to be applied to various monuments in Western Asia and Anatolia whose origins had been forgotten or unknown.

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5.

Semiramis related that Derketo abandoned her at birth and drowned herself and that doves fed the child until Simmas, the royal shepherd, found her.

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6.

Semiramis married Onnes or Menones, a general under King Ninus, and she became an advisor to king.

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7.

Semiramis's advice led him to great successes and, at the Siege of Bactra, she personally led a party of soldiers to seize a key defensive point, leading to the capture of the city.

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8.

The writings of Diodorus about Semiramis is strongly influenced by the writings of Ctesias of Cnidus, but recent research suggests that his writings about Semiramis do not always follow those by Ctesias.

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9.

Legends describing Semiramis have been recorded by approximately 80 ancient writers including Plutarch, Eusebius, Polyaenus, Valerius Maximus, Orosius, and Justinus.

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10.

Semiramis was associated with Ishtar and Astarte since the time before Diodorus.

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11.

Name of Semiramis came to be applied to various monuments in Western Asia and Anatolia, the origins of which ancient writers sometimes asserted had been forgotten or unknown.

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12.

Semiramis appears in Petrarch's Triumph of Love, canto III, verse 76.

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13.

However, Semiramis always was admired for her martial and political achievements.

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14.

Semiramis was included in Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies and, starting in the fourteenth century, she was commonly found on the Nine Worthies list for women.

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15.

Semiramis appears in many plays and operas, such as Voltaire's tragedy Semiramis, and in multiple separate operas entitled Semiramide by Domenico Cimarosa, Marcos Portugal, Josef Myslivecek, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, and Gioachino Rossini.

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16.

Semiramis was mentioned by Shakespeare in Act 2 Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus and Scene 2 of the Induction in The Taming of the Shrew.

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17.

In John Myers Myers's novel Silverlock, Semiramis appears as a lustful, commanding queen, who stops her procession to try to seduce young Lucius.

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18.

Semiramis claimed that the head of the Catholic Church inherited and continued to propagate a millennia-old secret conspiracy founded by Semiramis and the Biblical king Nimrod to propagate the pagan religion of ancient Babylon.

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19.

Hislop asserted that Semiramis was a queen consort and the mother of Nimrod, builder of the Bible's Tower of Babel.

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20.

Semiramis said that Semiramis and Nimrod's incestuous male offspring was the Akkadian deity Tammuz, and that all divine pairings in religions were retellings of this story.

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