Book Title: The Moon That Fell from Heaven

Series: Empire at Twilight

Author: N.L. Holmes

Publication Date: September 26th, 2023

Publisher: Red Adept Publishing

Page Length: 307

Genre: Historical fiction

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Book Title and Author Name:

The Moon That Fell from Heaven

by N.L. Holmes

Blurb:

Ehli-nikkalu, eldest daughter of the Hittite emperor, is married to a mere vassal of her father’s. But despite her status, her foreignness and inability to produce an heir drive a wedge between her and the court that surrounds her. When her secretary is mysteriously murdered while carrying the emperor a message that would indict the loyalty of his vassal, Ehli-nikkalu adopts the dead man’s orphaned children out of a guilty sense of responsibility.

A young cousin she has never met becomes a pretender to the throne and mobilizes roving armies of the poor and dispossessed, which causes the priority of her loyalties to become even more suspect. However, Ehli-nikkalu discovers a terrible secret that could destabilize the present regime if the pretender ever learns of it.

With the help of a kindly scribe, her brave young ward, and an embittered former soldier trapped in debt and self-doubt, Ehli-nikkalu sets out to save the kingdom and prove herself to her father. And along the way, she learns something about love.

When Angels Fly blog

Since The Moon That Fell from Heaven has two female protagonists, it might be fun to take a look at some of what we know about women in the Bronze Age kingdom of Ugarit. To be sure, it was patriarchal—we have no evidence ever of a female ruler, for example. Yet women were a visible and even powerful sector of society, and the king’s wife or mother might exercise considerable influence over her man.

In the first place, females were prominent on the heavenly scene. Male gods were never without their consorts, who were just as powerful as they. Nor were they relegated to domesticity: Anat was a bloodtirsty warrior goddess. Obviously, the divine realm isn’t a perfect reflection of the earthly, nor do human societies necessarily pattern themselves on the gods. One need only think of the ancient Greeks, whose pantheon was filled with goddesses, yet who kept their real-life women barefoot and pregnant, legal minors till the end of their days! But it does suggest a sensitivity to the female principle in the universe and to the power of maternity—this in a world where fertility might be a life or death issue.

Let’s start at the bottom, with ordinary people. Legal texts are of use to here, because they show patterns of inheritance and how citizens, male or female, were treated in legal transactions. Fortunately, a fairly large number of such documents have survived in Ugarit, thank to the fiery end to which the city was put when it fell before the advances of th Sea Peoples in the early twelfth century BCE.

What we find is that marriage—no surprise—was a contract between families, but perhaps not too strictly between the groom and the girl’s father. The bride-price offered by the groom was not always paid to the father, but at least sometimes to the bride herself, when, in case of the dissolution of the mrriage by death or divorce, she could take it with her. Once married, however, she was subordinated to her husband, who was her “ba’al”, her lord. Adultery was only an offense against a married man. His wife had no exclusive claim to him. One might expect to find polygamy in Ugarit, but in fact there is no hard evidence of it. On the other hand, people sometimes identified themselves by their mother’s lineage rather than their father’s, and women certainly served as active partners in their husbands’ businesses, capable of buying and selling property in their own name. This protection against a lopsided financial dependence on their husbands gave them a certain independence, and widows were not automatically helpless.

Whether Ugaritic women commonly had careers is unclear. Records of artisan guilds show very few few feminine names in their member lists. On the other hand, it seems almost incredible that a poor family wouldn’t employ every pair of hands in, for instance, weaving or pottery making, let alone helping on the family farm. So we must admit we just don’t have enough sources to make a judgment here.

Evidence for women in public life is limited and seems to begin late in the kingdom’s history, perhaps reflecting an adoption of the social norms of their new masters the Hittites, who accorded females a substantial presence, particularly from the time of their omnipresent queen dowager Puduhepa. Long-lived Ugarite dowagers like Ahat-milku, widow of of Niqmepa II, were prominent in diplomatic correspondences, no doubt furnishing valuable experience to their newly-crowned sons and grandsons.  Unlike Egypt, nowhere in Ugarit do we find evidence of women holding political positions of authority.

On a lower level, women were considered the equals of men before the law, were able to testify, bring lawsuits, and generally defend themselves. It isn’t clear whether women and men mingled in social settings, but mythology suggests that it’s so—taking part together, for instance, in banquets.

Thus, we find in the millennial history of this small Syrian city state an environment not too hostile to its women. They seem to have been respected, given credit for intelligence, and well treated. Perhaps the idea of their complete equality with men would have developed had the society not disappeared completely and suddenly. When one thinks about how limited the rights of American women were even in the early 20th century, things don’t look too bad there on the shores of the Mediterranean a long time ago!

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Author Bio:

N.L. Holmes is the pen name of a professional archaeologist who received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. She has excavated in Greece and in Israel and taught ancient history and humanities at the university level for many years. She has always had a passion for books, and in childhood, she and her cousin used to write stories for fun.

These days she lives in France with her husband, two cats, geese, and chickens, where she gardens, weaves, dances, and plays the violin

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