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 inaugurated, the worship of Mut was discontinued and Tiy went into retirement.  In Akhenaton’s time the vulture symbol of the goddess Mut did not appear above the sculptured figures of royalty.

What connection the god Aton had with Mut during the period of the Tiy regime remains obscure.  There is no evidence that Aton was first exalted as the son of the Great Mother goddess, although this is not improbable.

Queen Sammu-rammat of Assyria, like Tiy of Egypt, is associated with social and religious innovations.  She was the first, and, indeed, the only Assyrian royal lady, to be referred to on equal terms with her royal husband in official inscriptions.  In a dedication to the god Nebo, that deity is reputed to be the protector of “the life of Adad-nirari, king of the land of Ashur, his lord, and the life of Sammu-rammat, she of the palace, his lady".[465]

During the reign of Adad-nirari IV the Assyrian Court radiated Babylonian culture and traditions.  The king not only recorded his descent from the first Shalmaneser, but also claimed to be a descendant of Bel-kap-kapu, an earlier, but, to us, unknown, Babylonian monarch than “Sulili”, i.e.  Sumu-la-ilu, the great-great-grandfather of Hammurabi.  Bel-kap-kapu was reputed to have been an overlord of Assyria.

Apparently Adad-nirari desired to be regarded as the legitimate heir to the thrones of Assyria and Babylonia.  His claim upon the latter country must have had a substantial basis.  It is not too much to assume that he was a son of a princess of its ancient royal family.  Sammurammat may therefore have been his mother.  She could have been called his “wife” in the mythological sense, the king having become “husband of his mother”.  If such was the case, the royal pair probably posed as the high priest and high priestess of the ancient goddess cult—­the incarnations of the Great Mother and the son who displaced his sire.