Not a Woman?
But not everyone is convinced the tablet portrays the mysterious Mistress.
"The figure is, in my opinion, a man," commented University of California, Los Angeles Egyptologist Kathlyn Cooney.
"I would expect a female to wear an ankle-length dress, not a knee-length kilt," Cooney said.
"This figure is also shown striding, with legs apart, a typical posture for a man."
Instead, the plaque may depict a male king who is wearing a wig and making an offering to a deity of lotuses—a flower symbolic of death and rebirth to the ancient Egyptians, Cooney added.
Robert Griffin, an Ancient Near Eastern history scholar at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, is also skeptical the figure is a woman, but said a female Canaanite ruler would not be that surprising.
"It would not have been the norm, but it certainly could have been possible," Griffin said.
As an example, Griffin points to Hatshepsut, the wife of an 18th-dynasty Egyptian pharaoh.
After her husband's death, Hatshepsut famously portrayed herself as a man in a bid to solidify her claim to the throne over that of her young stepson.
A similar thing may have happened in Canaan, which was heavily influenced by the Egyptians, Griffin said.
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