QUEEN. The Hebrews had no word properly answering to our term queen,' which is the femi nine of king ;' neither had they the dignity which that word denotes. The Hebrew word usually translated queen' is rrona, gebirah, which means mistress,' or lady,' being the feminine of -ona, gebir, or lord.' The feminine is to be understood by its relation to the masculine, which is not applied to kingly power, or to kings, but to general authority and dominion. It is, in fact, the word which occurs twice with reference to Isaac's blessing of Jacob Be lord over thy brethren ;' and, `I have made him thy lord' (Gen. xxvii. 29 37).
The limited use which is made even of the re stricted term is somewhat remarkable. It is only employed twice with reference to the wife of a king. In one of these two cases it is applied to the wife of the king of Egypt, where the con dition of the royal consort was more queenly than in Palestine (i Kings xi. 19 ; comp. Wilkinson, A. Egypt., ii. 59 ; iii. 64; v. 28); and in the other to Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, who, as the daughter of a powerful king, appears to have enjoyed pecu liar privileges in her matrimonial state (z Kings x. 13). In two other places it is not clear whether the king's wife or mother is intended (Jer. xiii. 18 ; xxix. 2) ; and in the remaining passages it is point edly referred to the king's mother in such terms as clearly show that the state which she held was one of positive dignity and rank (r Kings xv. 13 ; 2 Chron. xv. 16).
There is another word, Xij, shegol, also trans lated queen,' which simply denotes the king's wife or (in the plural) his wives, as distinguished from his concubines. It occurs in Ps. xlv. 9 ; Neh. H. 6 ; Dan. v. 2, 3, 23.
The result of all inquiry into the subject seems to show that among the Jewish kings the usages bearing on this point were not different from those which are still exhibited in Western Asiatic courts. Where woman never becomes the head of the state, there can be no queen regnant ; and where polygamy is allowed or practised, there can be no queen consort. There will, however, be a chief wife in the harem ; and this is no doubt the rank indicated in the Bible by the words which we render queen.' This rank may be variously ac quired. The first wife of the king, or the first whom he took after his accession, usually obtained it ; and if she is both of high birth and becomes the mother of the first son, her position is tolerably secure : but if she possesses neither of these advan tages, she may be superseded in her position as head of the harem by a wife of higher birth and connections, subsequently espoused, or by one who becomes the mother of the heir-apparent.
The king, however, will sometimes act according to his own pleasure in this matter, promote any favourite lady to this dignity, and also remove her from it at his pleasure ; but more generally he finds it convenient to follow the established routine. The king of Egypt's daughter was, doubtless, from her high rank, the chief wife of Solomon ; as was Jezebel, for the same reason, the chief wife of Ahab. In like manner the high-born mother of Absalom was probably the chief wife of David, although it is possible that the mother of the eldest son Amnon at first enjoyed that distinction, which, we may safely presume, eventually devolved on Bathsheba, after her son Solomon had been recog nised as the heir (comp. Chardin, Voyages, edit, Langles, vi., ch. xii.; Thornton's Turkey, ii. 264 286).
Very different was, and is to this day, in West ern Asia, the position of the king's mother, whose state is much the nearest to that of an European queen of any with which the East is acquainted. It is founded on that essential principle of Oriental manners which in all cases considers the mother of the husband as a far superior person to his wife, and as entitled to more respect and attention. This principle should be clearly understood, for it extends throughout the Bible, and is yet entirely different from our own social arrangements, under which the mother, as soon as she becomes widowed, abandons her place as head of the family to the daughter-in-law (Urquhart, Spirit of the East, ii. 387, seq.) This usage is by no means peculiar to the modern East, or to the Jews among the ancient Orientals. Heeren, indeed, 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 Ctcsias respecting the tyrannical influence exercised by Parysatis, Amestris, and others, bear ample testimony to this fact. The careful reader of Scripture will easily be able to trace the same ideas respecting the position of the king's mother among the Israelites (comp. s Kings i. ii. ; xv. 13 ; 2 Kings ix. 22, 30, 37; x. 13 ; xi. 1, ff.)—J. K.