The Pharaoh Hatshepsut
-Chrissie

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            When it comes to the Ancient Mediterranean, women rulers are few and far between. Though Spartan women had a great deal more freedom than other of their contemporaries, no woman was ever one of their General-Kings or a member of the Assembly. In the limited democracy of Athens, the idea of women having any kind of public authority would have been laughable in that they were barely allowed to leave the house unaccompanied. And while Rome produced some very powerful women, none called herself Senator or Emperor; both the Republic and the Empire remained staunchly patriarchal. But Egypt was different: while women were not held as equal to men, they were not fully subordinated, either. Egyptian law did not differentiate between men and women when it came to property ownership, businesses and contracts, or divorce. And though they could not join the priesthoods for most of the Egyptian pantheon or the pharaonic bureaucracy, they could, and many were, educated equally to their male counterparts. So, while there were not many, Egypt did see a few women as heads of state, and one of the best-known and most successful of those is Hatshepsut.

            Hatshepsut ruled in the Eighteenth Dynasty, holding the throne alongside her husband Tuthmosis II and as regent for her nephew Tuthmosis III from roughly 1479 to 1458 BCE. She was the daughter of a pharaoh, Tuthmosis I and the only surviving child with his primary wife Ahmasi. This did not grant her the position of heir, however. Tuthmosis named the son of one of his concubines as his heir, Tuthmosis II. The young man was married to his half-sister to add to his legitimacy. They had only one surviving child, a daughter, and so he repeated his what his father had done by naming a son by a concubine as heir. The length of Tuthmosis II’s reign is disputed: he reigned for either six or thirteen years, depending on which sources one consults. Some of the difficulty comes from the fact that Tuthmosis III used some of the same monuments as his father and because Hatshepsut is listed as co-ruler for both. We do know that Tuthmosis II suffered from a chronic illness his whole life, which may explain Hatshepsut’s prominence during his reign.

            When Tuthmosis II died, his heir was only two or three years old, and so Hatshepsut claimed the regency by right of her own birth and as the new pharaoh’s aunt. Early in her rule, she shifted the narrative of her power from being regent to ruling in her own right. In ceremonial roles and statuary, she presented herself as a man, including wearing a fake beard. The inscriptions referring to her use feminine pronouns, so it does not appear that she personally identified as a man but was associating herself with the pharaoh’s traditional position as a son of Ra. She also rewrote the story of her conception and birth: her father was not Tuthmosis I but the god Amun-Ra. Will Durant explains it poetically in the first volume of his Story of Civilization: “Amon had descended upon Hatshepsut’s mother in a flood of perfume and light; his attentions had been gratefully received; and on his departure he had announced that Ahmasi would give birth to a daughter in whom all the valor and strength of a god would be made manifest on earth.”[1] 

            She was adept at wielding power and is counted as one of the most successful pharaohs overall. She expanded trade, even reestablishing trade partnerships that had been lost for decades. She arranged the rebuilding and rededication of existing temples and built more. Once Tuthmosis III reached his majority, she sent him to the borders, where he retook lost territory and added more. By the end of his reign, Egypt controlled all of the way north to the Euphrates. His actions under Hatshepsut’s leadership led to Egypt having a strong reputation amongst its neighbors.

            She ruled for 22 years, dying around the age of 50, possibly of cancer. Having finally gained his full authority, Tuthmosis III removed her from many of the records and inscriptions. This has been assumed as an action of Damnatio Memoriae on his part, that he wanted to wipe her from Egyptian history entirely, however her work and the records of it were not completely destroyed. She was relegated to the position of regent, creating the appearance of an unbroken succession from the first to the third Tuthmosis.

            Hatshepsut was buried at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings, having made a point of not being buried in the Valley of the Queens. Her tomb was noted by Howard Carter in 1903 and opened in 1923, but the mummy was not identified as her until 2007. She now rests in the Egyptian Museum.

[1] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume One: Our Oriental Heritage, 212.