The Fraternal Birth Order Effect in the Royal House of Nineveh

Based on evidence of the cuneiform documents and studies in prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire of the seventh century BCE, it can be demonstrated that the last great king of the Sargonid dynasty, Assurbanipal (669–631 BCE), was the fourth son of his mother Ešarra-hammat. This information can be combined with later accounts in the Classical sources, in which the same Assyrian king, called Sardanapal(l)os in Greek, is depicted as effeminate and bisexual. The fact that the king Assurbanipal was the fourth son of his mother lends additional support to these later materials through the hypothesis that the fraternal birth order effect altered his gender identity and sexual orientation through maternal immune response. His father Esarhaddon was a sufferer of the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus, susceptibility to which is often connected to androgen deficiency, a condition that Assurbanipal may have inherited from his father. There are some indications that the effeminacy of king’s character became the source of moral resentment among the political allies of Assyria and its native elites already during his lifetime.