Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:14, 21 July 2005

Maat-ka-re Hatshepsut (c.1504 BC–1458 BC) was the fifth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. She is regarded variously as the earliest known queen regnant in history, as the first known female to take the title Pharaoh, and the first great woman in history, though all of these claims are contested. Hatshepsut is generally regarded by modern Egyptologists as one of the most successful pharaohs; ruling longer than any female leader of Egypt, except Cleopatra. She was one of the most prolific builders in Ancient Egypt, commissioning hundreds of construction projects throughout Egypt. She also began rebuilding Egypt's trade networks which had been disrupted by the Hyksos occupation of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.

She is believed to have ruled from 1473 BC to 1458 BC. Josephus quotes Manetho as stating that she reigned 21 years and 9 months, while Africanus (who was also quoting Manetho) states her reign lasted 22 years. Her name is sometimes spelled Hapshepsut, Hatchepsut, or Hat-shep-set.

Family and pre-pharaonic life

She was the daughter of Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose, both of whom had fully royal blood. In childhhod, Hatshepsut was favored by the Temple of Karnak over her two brothers who would not live into adulthood. Apparently she also had a loving relationship with her parents and assumed the prestigious title of God's Wife of Amun before either parent died. After the death of her father in 1492 BC she married her younger half-brother Thutmose II and assumed the title of Great Royal Wife. To become pharaoh, Thutmose II had to marry a Hatshepsut, because females, not males carried royal blood in Ancient Egyptian society. Thutmose II ruled for only 13 years, during which it is believed Hatshepsut exerted much influence over him.

Thutmose II had two daughters with Hatshepsut, Nefrure and Meritre. Hatshepsut was grooming the elder Nefrure as crown prince, commisioning official portraits of Nefrure wearing the false beard and side lock of youth, but also transferred the feminine title of God's Wife of Amun to Nefrure upon ascending to the throne. Some scholars speculate that this is evidence of Hathspsut's claim that she was her father's inteded heir (see official propaganda), other that she was merley planning another Hatshepsut. Whatever her interntions they came to nothing as Nefrure would not live into adulthood. Meritre may have been married, in childhood, to her contemporary Thutmose III, the son and male heir of Thutmose II, by a lesser wife named Isis, and may also have been the mother of Amenhotep IV. Some egyptologists dispute Meritre was Hatshepsut's daughter, and say that she was infact Hatshepsut or was somone else's child named in Hatshepsut's honor.

Her rule

Upon Thutmose II death, Hatshepsut— as Thutmose III's aunt and stepmother— was selected to be regent until the boy king came of age. At first it seemed that Hatshepsut was patterning herself after the powerful female regents of Egypt's then recent history, but as Thutmose III aproached his majority it became apparent that she had only one model in mind: Sobeknefru, the last monarch of the Twelfth dynasty, who ruled in her own right. However, Hatshepsut took one step further than Sobeknefru and had herself crowned Pharaoh around 1473 BC, taking the throne name Maatkare.

Hatshepsut surrounded herself by strong and loyal advisors, many of whom are still known today: Hapuseneb, the High Priest of Amun; Nehsi a Nubian general, and her closest advisor— the royal steward Senemut. Because of the close nature of Hatshepsut and Senemut's relationship some egyptologists have theorized that Hatshepsut and Senemut were lovers; citing that Hatshepsut allowed Senemut to place his name and an image of himself behind one of the main doors in Djeser-Djeseru (a rare and unusual sharing of credit), that Senemut had two tombs constructed near Hatshepsut't tomb (a standard privalidge for close advisors), and the presence of graffiti in an unfinished tomb, used as a rest house by the workers of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, depicting a male and a hermaphrodite in pharaonic regalia engaging in an explicit sexual act. Although the belief that Hatshepsut and Senemut were lover is well known, it is highly contested among egyptologist; all that is agreed on is that they were close friends.

As Hatshepsut reestablish the trade networks disrupted during the Hyksos occupation of Egypt durign the Second Intermediate Period, the wealth of the 18th dynasty —that has become so famous since the discovery of the burial of Tutankhamun— began to be collected. Hatshepsut oversaw the preparations for and funded a mission, led by Nehsi, to the Land of Punt. The expedition set out in her name with five ships, each measuring seventy feet long, and with several sails; each ship accommodated 210 men, including sailors and thirty rowers. Many goods were bought in Punt, most notably myrrh, which is said to have been Hatshepsut's favorite fragrance. She had the expedition commemorated in relief at Deir el-Bahri, which is famous for its unflattering depiction of the Queen of Punt.

Although many Egyptologists have claimed that her foreign policy was mainly peaceful, there is evidence that she led successful military campaigns in Nubia, the Levant, and Syria early in her career.

Builder pharaoh

Hatshepsut was a builder pharaoh, as pharaoh she initiated building projects that were grander and more numerous than any of her New Kingdom predecessors. She employed two great architects: Ineni, who had worked for both her husband and father, and the royal steward Senemut. During her regin so much staturary was produced that almost every major museum in the world has a collection of Hatshepsut statuary, the Hatshepsut Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is soley dedicate to these pieces. Hatshepsut, like most pharaohs, had monuments constructed at the Temple of Karnak. She had twin obelisks, at the time the tallest in the world, erected at the entrance to the temple. One still stands today; the other has since broken in two and toppled. Karnak's Red Chapel, or Chapelle Rouge, was intended as a barque shrine and may have originally stood between the two obelisks. She later ordered two more obelisks to be made to celebrate her 16th year as pharaoh. However one of the obelisks broke while being made, causing for a third to be made to replace it. The broken obelisk was left at Aswan, where it was made, and where it still lies to this day and has proven valuable to learing how obelisks were quarried.

The masterpiece of her building projects was her mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri. It was designed and implemented by Senemut on a site on the West Bank of the Nile close to the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. The focal point was the Djeser-Djeseru or "the Sublime of Sublimes", a colonnaded structure of perfect harmony nearly one thousand years before the Parthenon. Djeser-Djeseru sits atop a series of terraces that once were graced with gardens. Djeser-Djeseru is built into a cliff face that rises sharply above it. Djeser-Djeseru and the other buildings of the Deir el-Bahri complex are considered to be among the great buildings of the ancient world.

Official propaganda

Hatshepsut was an excellent propagandist, and while all ancient leaders used propaganda to legitimize their rule, she is one of the most known for it. Much of her propaganda had religous overtones supported by, the priests at the Temple of Karnack.

In Ancient Egypt, women had a higher status than they did elswhere in the ancient world, including the court protected right to own or inherit property. Still having a female ruler in her own right was rare, only Khent-Kaues, Sobeknefru and possibly Nitocris preceded her as ruling in there own name. Pharaoh was an exclusively male title; at this point in Egyptian history there was no word for a Queen regnant only for Queen consort, as such the women who ruled before Hatshepsut used the Queen consort's title of God's of Amun. Hatshepsut is unique in that she was the first woman to take the title of King regnant or King in the absence of a word or title for Queen regnant.

Hatshepsut slowly assumed all of the regalia and symbols of the office of King: the Khat head cloth, toped with an uraeus, the false beard and shendyt kilt. Many existing statues show her in both a feminine and masculine form. However, after this period of transition ended, all depictions of her showed her in a masculine form, with all of the pharonic regalia and with her breasts omitted. Hatshepsut's reasoning for doing this is a topic of debat among egyptolgists. Some believe in the traditional explanation of Hatshepsut believe her motivation for wearing men's clothing was sexual. While most modern scolars believe in a more recent theory: that by assuming the exlusively male symbols of pharaonic power, Hatshepsut was asserting her claim to be King or Queen regnant and not King's Wife or Queen consort. Even after assuming the male persona, Hatshepsut still described her self as beautiful woman, often the most beautiful woman, and although she assumed almost all of her father's titles, she declined to take the title Great Bull.

One the most famous pices is a birth myth. In it Amun goes to Ahmose in the form of Thutmose I and wakes Ahmose with pleasant odors at which point Amun places the ankh, a symbol of life, to Ahmose's nose conceiving Hatshepsut. Khnum, the god who forms the bodies of human children, is then instructed to create a body and ka, or corporal presence/life force, for Hatshepsut. Khnum and Heket, goddess of life and fertility, lead Ahmose along to a lion bed where she gives birth to Hatshepsut. The Oracle of Amun proclaimed that it was the will of Amun that Hatshepsut be Pharaoh. Hatshepsut publicized this by having a personal endorsements from Amun carved onto monuments, such as this one.

"Welcome my sweet daughter, my favorite, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare,Hatshepsut. Thou art the Pharaoh, taking possession of the Two Lands."

Hatshepsut also claimed that she was her father's intended heir and that made her crown prince of Egypt. Propaganda to this effect was commissiond on the walls of her Mortuary temple:

Then his majesty said to them: "This daughter of mine, Khnumetamun Hatshepsut— may she live!— I have appointed as my successor upon my throne... she shall direct the people in every sphere of the palace; it is she indeed who shall lead you. Obey her words, unite yourselves at her command." The royal nobles, the dignitaries, and the leaders of the people heard this proclamation of the promotion of his daughter, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare— may she live eternally!

Death

Hatshepsut disappeared with no record of her death,although both natural causes and murder have both been proposed as causes. Her mummy is believed to be missing from the Deir el-Bahri Cache, and has never been officially identified. An unidentified female mummy found with Hatshepsut's wet nurse Sitre In had her arms posed in the traditonal burial style of pharoahs, has lead to the theory that the unidentified mummy might be Hatshepsut.

After her death, many of her monuments were defaced or destroyed. Replacing the names on older monuments with the name of the current ruler was a common practice of pharaohs, but in some cases this is thought to have been an act of damnatio memoriae— condemning a person by erasing him or her from recorded existence. Egyptologists have differing views on who defaced Hatshepsut's monuments and their possible motivations including resentment for the belief that a female Pharaoh was against Maàt.

The traditional belief is that Thutmose III was responsible, and view the act as revenge being denied the throne for so long. However, researchers such as Charles Nims and Peter Dorman have examined these erasures and found that those which can be dated were done after the forty-second year of Thutmose's reign, while Donald B. Redford suggests a more sympathetic and complex motivation: Thutmose's need to demonstrate his legitimacy. Redford notes that:

"here and there, in the dark recesses of a shrine or tomb where no plebeian eye could see, the queen's cartouche and figure were left intact ... which never vulgar eye would again behold, still conveyed for the king the warmth and awe of a divine presence."

Names

praenomen or throne name nomen or birth name
Hatshepsut in hieroglyphs
Era: New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC)

As with most pharaohs, Hatshepsut had a number of names. Her birth name, or nomen, was Hatshepsut, to which she suffixed the epithet Khenmetamun, and prefixed the praenomen, or throne name Maat-ka-re. Her names are written as shown in Egyptian hieroglyphs on the right; Maat-ka-re to the top and Hatshepsut to the bottom.

Maat-ka-re means "Maàt is the ka-spirit of Ra" and Hatshepsut means "Foremost of distinguished women, Joined with Amun". Together they mean "Maàt is the ka-spirit of Ra, Foremost of distinguished women, Joined with Amun". After she ascended the throne she changed her name from the feminine Hatshepsut to the male Hatshepsu.

The names are technically transliterated as m3‘t-k3-r‘ ḥ3t-špswt–hnmt-ỉmn.

In popular culture

Hatshepsut went from being one of the most obscure leaders of Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century to one of the most famous by the century's end. As women gained more equality with men, women in history were sought out and reclaimed. Biography's such as Hatshepsut by Evelyn Wells romanticized her as beautiful and pacifistic woman — "the first great woman in History". This was quite a contrast to the 19th-century view of Hatshepsut as a wicked step mother usurping the throne from Thutmose III.

Authors Moyra Caldecott and Pauline Gedge have both written historical fiction novels featuring Hatshepsut as the heroine. In 1960 a small main belt asteroid, 2436 Hatshepsut, was discovered by Cornelis Johannes van Houten, Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld and Tom Gehrels; and was named for her.

Hatshepsut is one of the known AI leaders featured in the upcoming turn-based strategy computer game Sid Meier's Civilization IV and her mortuary temple was replicated in the computer game Serious Sam. To date no film has been made featuring Hatshepsut, but a screenplay named Daughter of Ra has one awards, and is being lobbied for online. In the first decade of the 21st century Hatshepsut was one of the most popular and recognized leaders of Ancient Egypt.

Template:Pharaoh

Sources

• Joyce Tyldesley, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, Penguin Books, 1998, paperback, 270 pages, ISBN 0140244646
• Evelyn Wells, Hatshepsut, Double Day, 1969, hardback, 211 pages
• Caroline Seawright, Hatshepsut, Female Pharaoh of Egypt, touregypt.net, retrieved June 15, 2005

Fiction

• Moyra Caldecott, Hatshepsut: Daughter of Amun, Mushroom, eBook and paperback, 244 pages, ISBN 1843192632
• Pauline Gedge, Child of the Morning, Soho Press, 403 pages, ISBN 0939149850

External links

• Hatshepsut, the Queen who would be King
• Maatkare.com fansite
• Maat-ka-ra.de fansite (in German)
• Daughter of Ra Screenplay
• Poetry honoring Hatshepsut

See also

• List of Pharaohs

v t e Ancient Egypt topics
Glossary of artifacts Index Main topics
Agriculture Architecture Revival Obelisks Pylon Art Portraiture Astronomy Chronology Cities List Clothing Ancient Egyptian race controversy Population history of Egypt Prehistoric Egypt Cuisine Dance Dynasties Funerary practices Geography Great Royal Wives List Hieroglyphs Cursive hieroglyphs History Language Demotic Hieratic Literature Mathematics Medicine Military Music Mythology People Pharaohs List Titulary Philosophy Pottery Religion Scribes Sites Capitals District Technology Trade Egypt–Mesopotamia relations
Egyptology Egyptologists Museums
Ancient Egypt portal Category Commons Outline WikiProject

• 1504 BC births
• 1458 BC deaths
• Pharaohs
• Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt
• Queens regnant