Hatshepsut: Female Pharaoh

Today we are travelling way back to the 1400s BCE, that is almost 3500 thousand years ago to meet one of the most successful female pharaohs of Egypt. A woman whose statues are donned with a fake beard and who has often been dubbed as villainous and vile. But what I want to know is, was she really as bad as the previous generation of Egyptologists have made out, or was she a powerful and successful ruler who has been maligned after her death.

Now, it is important to note that when we are looking at the primary sources from Hatshepsut’s reign, virtually everything we know about her was written by her, well probably not physically, but she would have had the final approval on everything that was recorded about her. That means that most of what we know about her life and achievements is probably propaganda. And hence, the stories about her may not be entirely reliable. Imagine if you had to etch your life story permanently onto stone to be remembered by people in the future for time immemorial. I think you would take some liberties and put your best foot forward. Especially, if you were a woman fulfilling the role of what was traditionally a man’s job.

Before we start, it is important to get your head around the terminology. The word pharaoh means ruler and this job was typically held by a man. Over the 3000-year period of ancient Egypt, only about 7 women held this title. Some women did act as a regent if the son who was meant to be pharaoh was too young to rule, but as a general rule, being a pharaoh was a man’s game.

What is super interesting about Hatshepsut, as in the early depictions of her she was shown as a woman, but over time her statues became increasingly masculine. She was shown with bigger muscles, and wearing male clothing and even depicted as wearing a fake beard. This may have been a way for her to claim legitimacy of her position as a female pharaoh. Interestingly, she still used female pronouns. But I am getting ahead of myself, let’s find out how she come into this job.

Hatshepsut was a part of the 18^th dynasty. This means that they were the 18^th royal family to rule Egypt. You know that famous pyramid called the Great Pyramid of Giza? Well, that pyramid had already been built for 1000 years by the time that Hatshepsut was born. And it was about another 1400 years before another famous female Egyptian ruler, Cleopatra, was born. The history of Egypt is a very long period of time.

Anyway, her dad was the 3rd pharaoh of the 18^th dynasty and his name was Thutmose the First. However, a little later in the story, Hatshepsut will claim that her father was actually a god. She did this to make her own rule as pharaoh more legitimate, but I will get to that later. Usually, the title of pharaoh was passed to the male heir, and in this case it did, it was passed to Thutmose II. He was Hatshepsut’s half-brother. You see in ancient Egyptian times the pharaoh was allowed to have many wives. This increased the chances of him ensuring that there was a son to inherit the throne. But even though a pharaoh had many wives, they always picked one main wife who became the great royal wife. So, Hatshepsut was the daughter of the great royal wife of Thutmose I and Thutmose II the second was the son of one of the secondary wives. That made them half siblings. I don’t want to get too judgemental here, but when their dad died and Thutmose the Second became pharaoh Hatshepsut and her half-brother got married. Because they believed that the royal family were descended from gods, this was their way of trying to keep the blood line pure.

Somewhere between 3 and 13 years later, Thutmose II died- he was only in his 30s. Although, Hatshepsut and Thutmose II had a baby girl together, she clearly could not take over the throne because she was a girl, but luckily one of his secondary wives had a boy who became Thutmose III.

Another thing that happened quite a bit in ancient Egypt, was that if a boy inherited the throne at a very young age, they would have a woman rule for him as a regent. That means that the regent makes all of the decisions until the child is old enough to rule on their own. Usually, this person would the child’s mother, but this was not the case for Thutmose III. Because his mother was a secondary wife, to make sure that people respected the legitimacy of Thutmose III, Hatshepsut stepped up and became his regent. After all she had been in the job of great royal wife for a while, so she knew what she was doing.

This is where she starts to weave her magic as ruler. She was a prolific builder and she opened up trade to other countries. Egypt was incredibly prosperous under her rule. If you don’t know what an obelisk is, it is a giant four-sided granite pole – about 28 meters tall—with a triangle shape on top and the sides are carved with inscriptions. They weigh about 340 tonnes. A car weighs about 1 ½ tonnes, so imagine it was as heavy as 220 cars. They were a form of propaganda and she used them to make sure that people knew she was the legitimate ruler.  On one of them she wrote that she built the obelisk for her father, the God Amun- not Thutmose I. On a different inscription she told the story of how one night her mother was visited by the god Amun and he thought that she was very attractive. She became pregnant to the god and this baby was Hatshepsut. This was another way of making sure that the people knew that she was a legitimate pharaoh. In her inscriptions she began to depict herself as being the pharaoh or co-pharaoh, not just the regent to Thutmose III. She was shown wearing the pharaoh’s headdress and she gave herself a pharaoh name Maatkare.

Another method of legitimising her rule that she used was to have herself depicted as wearing a beard and looking masculine in her body. The early statues of Hatshepsut are quite feminine looking, but as time goes by and she needs to ensure that people believe that she is rightfully in the position of pharaoh. She starts to get broader shoulders and has a beard and is wearing what was considered male clothing.

Hatshpsut had a very successful rule as pharaoh, it was a time of great peace and she even built a magnificent funerary temple in the valley of the kings. This was another place she could inscribe the walls with her propaganda and make sure she was shown in a positive light.

Hatshepsut died after ruling for about 20 years and Thutmose III was well and truly old enough to rule by himself. You would think that would be the end of the story, but 25 years after her death, Thutmose decided so send out people with chisels to all of the monuments that mentioned that she was the pharaoh and erase any evidence of her in the job. He left alone her images, and all of the references to her before she was the pharaoh, but he tried to make sure that any of the writings that referred to her rule were erased. He also transformed her funerary temple into a monument for his father and grandfather the Thutmoses I and II. He left no explanation for this vandalism, but these actions seem to coincide with the time period that he picked the next heir to be pharaoh, so there is some speculation that he was making sure his son was seen as the legitimate next king. The things that parents will do for their children!