Shammuramat (Akkadian: Sammu-rāmat or Sammu-ramāt), also known as Sammuramat or Shamiram and Semiramis, was a powerful queen of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Beginning her career as the primary consort of the king Shamshi-Adad V (r. 824–811 BC), Shammuramat reached an unusually prominent position in the reign of her son Adad-nirari III (r. 811–783 BC). Though there is dispute in regard to Shammuramat's formal status and position, and if she should be considered a co-regent, it is clear that she was among the most powerful and influential women of the ancient Near East and the Iron Age in general; she is the only known Assyrian queen to have retained her status as queen after the death of her husband and the only known ancient Assyrian or Mesopotamian woman to have partaken in, and perhaps even led, a military campaign.

Shammuramat's origin is not clear; her name could equally likely be of West Semitic or East Semitic Akkadian origin. Proposed regions of origin include Akkadian speaking Assyria itself, the ethnolinguistically indestinguishable Babylonia (also Akkadian speaking), Levant and Phoenicia. If originating as a foreigner, she is typically assumed to have been a princess. Nothing is known of her life or relative influence and power in the reign of her husband. Under Adad-nirari, her role was exceptionally prominent for a woman of the time. Per the Pazarcık Stele she accompanied her son on a campaign against the Hittites Kummuh in Hittite and both she and Adad-nirari are credited with expanding the borders of the empire in all directions into Levant, Anatolia and Ancient Iran. In some inscriptions, local governors made dedications not only to the king (as was customary) but exceptionally also to Shammuramat. All evidence suggests that Shammuramat was among the most renowned figures of her time.

Shammuramat was immortalized in later Persian, Levantine and Greco-Roman literary tradition as the legendary Assyrian warrior-queen and heroine Semiramis, a half-divine daughter of the Aramean goddess Atargatis and the wife of the fictional Ninus, the legendary and mythical founder of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire. Among the legendary feats ascribed to Semiramis were securing victory during a siege of the city of Bactra, the foundation of Babylon, and the invention of a type of pants/trousers later popular among the Medes, Persians and Parthians. Numerous parallels can be drawn between the historical Shammuramat and the legendary Semiramis whose feats are mythical rather than historical. Semiramis and Shammuramat are both still used as popular given names for girls among the Assyrian people today.

Shammuramat's name, spelt mí.sa-am-mu–ra-mat in Assyrian inscriptions (transliterated as Sammu-rāmat, Sammu-ramāt or Šammu-ramat), is of either West Semitic or East Semitic Akkadian origin. In West Semitic it would likely have been rendered as šmyrm or šmrmt. The most likely etymology of the name is that it follows a common name archetype in both West Semitic and Akkadian, on the form dn-rāmu/rāmat ("dn is exalted") in West Semitic or dn-ramāt ("dn is beloved") in Akkadian, where dn is a theophoric (name of a god) element. Sammu, rendered as ^dsa(-a)-mu (meaning "red"), was the name of an otherwise poorly attested deity in the Neo-Assyrian period.

Various alternate etymologies have also been proposed. In Classical Greek sources, Shammuramat's name appears in the forms Σεμιραμις (Semiramis) and Σεμυραμις (Semeramis). According to the 1st-century BC Classical Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, the name ultimately derived from the Assyrian/Akkadian/Babylonian word for "dove", an etymology probably based on equating Σεμι- (Semi-) with the Akkadian summatu or summu (meaning dove). The 7th-century Jewish midrash Leviticus Rabbah traces the etymology of the name to the West Semitic šmy rʻm ("thunder of heaven"), relating it to a legend that she was born in thunder. In 1991, Moshe Weinfeld suggested that the name derived from the Phoenician šmm rmm ("high heavens").

Shammuramat was born c. 850 BC. Nothing is known of Shammuramat's origins from contemporary sources. In later classical tradition, Shammuramat was variously described as being of Levantine or native Assyrian/Mesopotamian origin. Various alternate origins have also been suggested by modern historians, though all such proposals are mere speculation. In 1910, Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt suggested that she was a Mesopotamian Babylonian princess, though there is no evidence for such an idea. Wilhelm Eilers proposed in 1971 that she might have been a princess from Urartu and in 1991, Weinfeld suggested that she was a princess from Ashkelon. Ashkelon seems an unlikely place of origin because the city was situated far beyond the Assyrian imperial ambitions of the time and since it would be unlikely for an Assyrian king to marry someone from a city of such little diplomatic weight. In 2001, Jamie Novotny proposed that she could have been an Assyrian or Aramean princess from Syria, perhaps from either Carchemish, Gurgum, Namri, Que, Patina, Subria, Bit Adini or Samʼal.

Shammuramat was the wife and queen of the Neo-Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad V (r. 824–811 BC). The surviving source material concerning Shammuramat is relatively limited. In known material from her husband's reign, she is only mentioned in a single eye bead inscribed with her name. Her role and influence at the court of her husband is as such largely unknown. The inscription on the eye bead reads:

To Ishtar, her lady, Shammuramat, queen of Shamshi-Adad, king of Assyria, dedicated (this) for her well-being.