The Ivory Cover of the Melisende Psalter, about 1131–1143
The carved ivory front cover of a psalter made in Jerusalem for Melisende, queen of the crusader kingdom in her own right. It was produced in a royal workshop that drew on Byzantine, Islamic and western models, for a woman who governed the kingdom for two decades.
Women in the crusader states were not a footnote to them. Melisende ruled Jerusalem as heir, as co-ruler with a husband who tried and failed to displace her, and then as regent; Eleanor of Aquitaine took the cross herself; noblewomen inherited and defended fiefs while their husbands were away or dead; and thousands of ordinary women travelled with the armies, carried water, worked in the camps and were counted only when a chronicler needed a number. The psalter is British Library, Egerton MS 1139. See women's crucial role in the crusades.
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