Clash of Cultures
Phoenician women enjoyed enormous liberty and were considered the equals of males. Both men and women presided over religious gatherings as priests and priestesses and, as daughter of a High Priest, Jezebel would have naturally been initiated into the priesthood. Her on-going conflict with the Prophet Elijah chronicled in I Kings has been interpreted by some as simply an impossible clash of cultural understanding as the Israelites were not accustomed to a strong female ruler and Jezebel was not used to second-class citizen status.
Jezebel was married, by contract, to King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as a means to cement an alliance between that city and her home state of Sidon. She almost immediately came into conflict with the religious class by importing her own priests and priestesses and setting up shrines and temples to the gods of her own understanding. In I Kings she orchestrates the murder of the landowner Naboth (slyly using Ahab's signet ring http://www.add-game.com/clash-of-kings-hack/
