The Enigma of Hatshepsut

The story of Hatshepsut is at first glance simple. She was the daughter of King Thutmose I, wife of King Thutmose II and mother of his daughter, Neferura. Upon her husband’s death (c. 1479 B.C.), she became queen regent of Egypt, ruling in place of the young heir who technically occupied the throne: Thutmose III, Thutmose II’s son by another wife. Between years 2 and 7 of Thutmose III’s reign, Hatshepsut adopted the full titulary of a king and ruled as Thutmose III’s co-regent and senior partner. By regnal year 22 she had disappeared from the scene, leaving Thutmose III as the sole ruler of Egypt.

This brief outline, however, hides the many enigmas and controversies that surround Hatshepsut’s life, which has intrigued Egyptologists and the general public alike ever since scholars first discovered evidence of her reign. How did Hatshepsut come to occupy the traditionally male position of king, something only a few women accomplished in 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history? Why did Thutmose III disfigure her monuments after her death, erasing her image and name? Was she a wicked stepmother who usurped her young stepson’s throne? It has been suggested recently that this portrait of Hatshepsut as a devious usurper who got her just deserts when Thutmose III mutilated her monuments can be traced to certain male scholars of the past who disapproved of a woman’s involvement in politics. Though most scholars today agree that we must modify these earlier interpretations, many questions relating to Hatshepsut’s life and reign remain unanswered.

Hatshepsut lived during the 18th Dynasty, founded by King Ahmose (1550–1525 B.C.), who had driven the Asiatic Hyksos rulers out of northern Egypt and reunited the country under a single king. Ahmose married his sister, Ahmose Nefertary, and was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep I (1525–1504 B.C.), who in turn married his sister Meritamun. There is no evidence that the couple had any surviving children, or that Amenhotep I had children by other wives. His successor was a man named Thutmose, whose mother, Senisonb, is named in a number of texts, but only with the title “king’s mother”—never as “king’s wife,” as would be the case if she had been a wife of King Amenhotep I or King Ahmose. It is now generally accepted that Amenhotep I appointed Thutmose I as his successor because he had no son of his own. Since Thutmose never named his father in any of his texts, we know nothing of his origins. He may have belonged to a junior branch of the royal family, or he may have been a member of an elite official family favored by the king. We do know that Thutmose I had two wives: Mutnofret, the mother of his successor, Thutmose II, and Ahmose (not to be confused with King Ahmose or his wife, Ahmose Nefertary), the mother of Hatshepsut.^a

Hatshepsut would later claim that her father, Thutmose I, had appointed her as his heir during his lifetime. Yet none of Thutmose I’s monuments even mentions his daughter. Thutmose I was in fact succeeded as king, not by Hatshepsut, but by Thutmose II, with Hatshepsut serving as the new king’s principal wife. From this time until her accession as king during the reign of Thutmose III, Hatshepsut was known as the “king’s daughter,” “king’s sister” and “king’s principal wife,” and she wore the insignia of a king’s principal wife, not of a king. A tomb was prepared for her in a remote wadi on the west bank at Thebes, not in the Valley of the Kings; her stone sarcophagus, which was left unused in this tomb, displays only queenly titles.

There is evidence, however, suggesting that Hatshepsut played an important role even before she became one of Egypt’s rare female kings. A small fragment of a calcite jar, probably dating to Thutmose I’s reign, bears an inscription referring to Hatshepsut not only as the “king’s eldest daughter” but also as “god’s wife of Amun”—one of her most important titles.

The first royal woman to bear the title “god’s wife of Amun” (or “god’s wife,” for short) was Ahmose Nefertary, wife of King Ahmose and mother of Amenhotep I. Ahmose bestowed the title upon her, and it was subsequently handed down from “heir to heir,” according to the Donation Stela in the Temple of Amun at Karnak. Ahmose Nefertary’s daughter Meritamun is also attested with the title, but she appears to have died without offspring. Hatshepsut was therefore the obvious choice to be the next god’s wife.

What did it mean to be god’s wife of Amun? The god Amun was the principal deity of the southern city of Thebes, where he was regarded as the creator god, and the god’s wife participated in his cult.¹ During this period, priests were customarily male, so the female god’s wife stands out among them. Why did this single female priest exist in the otherwise masculine cult of Amun? The answer lies in a second title borne by the god’s wife, that of “god’s hand.” This title refers to the hand with which the androgynous creator god masturbated in order to produce the first pair of male and female deities and so bring about the creation of the universe. Because the Egyptian word for “hand” is of feminine grammatical gender, the creator god’s hand was soon personified as a goddess. In the 18th Dynasty, the role of god’s hand, enacted by the god’s wife of Amun, must have involved ritually stimulating the creator god to reenact creation, thereby preventing the ordered universe from falling back into chaos. We do not know what the rituals were, but it is clear why the role had to be played by a woman.

When King Ahmose made Ahmose Nefertary god’s wife, he endowed the office with land and other property. Not only could the holders of the office draw on this wealth, but they would also have enjoyed elevated status because of their ritual contact with Amun. The office of god’s wife was potentially a very powerful position. When Ahmose Nefertary was referred to by only a single title, her most favored one was “god’s wife.” Hatshepsut’s appointment to the position, therefore, must have been a very significant event in her life.²

So during Thutmose II’s reign and the beginning of Thutmose III’s, Hatshepsut’s career followed the typical pattern of a king’s daughter, king’s sister, king’s principal wife and god’s wife.³ But after Thutmose II’s death, she assumed the duties of a regent and gradually began to expand her traditional female role. There is reason to believe that earlier queens had acted as regents, though little documentation exists concerning their regencies. In Hatshepsut’s case, however, a text tells us that Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for Thutmose III. Monuments from the period tell us more.

Hatshepsut’s most favored title was “god’s wife,” suggesting that she, like Ahmose Nefertary, regarded this office as a source of authority. She was also referred to as “lady of the two lands,” the feminine form of the kingly title “lord of the two lands.” Although previous queens had occasionally been given the title, Hatshepsut’s use of it during her regency may have been an attempt to place herself squarely within the tradition of Egyptian kings.

Hatshepsut also drew upon other kingly models, acting in ways normally restricted to kings. It was common practice, for example, for Egyptian officials to have their statues inscribed “given as a favor” by the king. During Hatshepsut’s regency, officials began acknowledging that their statues were “given as a favor” by the god’s wife or by the lady of the two lands. Further, whereas only kings set up obelisks in temples, Hatshepsut, while regent, ordered a pair of obelisks to be quarried at Aswan and erected in the temple of Amun at Karnak. And although queens occasionally appeared with the king in temple scenes where he offers to deities, they themselves never offer alone. Blocks from a now-dismantled building at Karnak, however, show numerous scenes in which Hatshepsut—still as king’s daughter, king’s sister, god’s wife, god’s hand and king’s principal wife—offers directly to Amun-Ra alone.

Clearly, in the beginning of Thutmose III’s reign, Hatshepsut was not only ruling for her young stepson but also adopting certain kingly prerogatives. This was, however, very different from actually claiming to be king, a step she is thought to have taken in either year 2 (1478 B.C.) or more probably year 7 (1473 B.C.) of Thutmose III’s reign.

After that critical juncture, Hatshepsut adopted the fivefold titulary—or sequence of titles, each expressing a different aspect of kingship—borne by Egyptian kings since the Old Kingdom. The new titulary replaced the string of titles Hatshepsut used as queen consort and queen regent, including that of god’s wife, which she passed on to her daughter, Neferura. To her given name, she added the epithet Khnemtamun (“united with Amun”) and a throne name, Maatkara (perhaps meaning “the true one of the ka of Ra”).⁴ In addition, she adopted a Horus name, Wesretkau (“strong of kas”), a nebty name, Wadjetrenput (“flourishing of years”) and a Golden Horus name, Netjeretkhau (“divine of appearances”).

Early in her reign as king, a few images of Hatshepsut depict her with typical kingly headdresses or crowns but with the body and dress of a woman. However, most of Hatshepsut’s monuments show her in the guise of a male king with a masculine physique and male kilt. Since Thutmose III also appears on Hatshepsut’s monuments, only the accompanying inscriptions distinguish one from the other.

So why do her representations as king depict her as a male, while many of her texts openly refer to her as female? Unfortunately, there is no certain answer. To modern viewers the male image has often been seen as evidence of Hatshepsut’s deviousness—a sort of sleight of hand to disguise her female identity (even though some early images from her reign do show her in female dress). More likely, Hatshepsut was simply following tradition. If viewers of a relief saw a female figure clad in female dress, they might not have realized that they were looking at a king. She was playing a role generally occupied by men, and for the legitimacy of the role to be recognized, it had to be given its traditional male form. The unequivocal identity of Hatshepsut as king was presumably more important to her than her sex.

Texts from Hatshepsut’s reign, however, are less clear cut regarding gender. They oscillate grammatically between masculine and feminine characterizations; for instance, she is sometimes called sa Ra (“son of Ra”) and other times sat Ra (“daughter of Ra”). Moreover, the content of these texts tells us that they refer to a king, irrespective of the grammatical gender employed. In any case, the use of both masculine and feminine grammatical genders was far less radical than the replacement of the typical male image of a king by an image with female dress and physique. It seems probable, then, that Hatshepsut was not trying to disguise her sex, since she was openly referred to as “the female Horus,” “daughter of Ra” and “perfect goddess”—all feminine forms of standard kingly titles. Further, she never called herself “strong bull,” which was part of the Horus names of her father, husband and co-regent. Since the bull was the epitome of male strength and potency, wouldn’t Hatshepsut have appropriated the symbol had she been indeed bent on adopting a male identity?

Hatshepsut’s status as a female king has proved enduringly fascinating, especially considering that Egypt already had a king when she elevated herself to that position. We have no evidence that she tried to eliminate or imprison Thutmose III. On the contrary, his name and image appear on her monuments, and many government officials used the names of both kings together. The practice of co-regency had been introduced centuries before, in the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 B.C.). In order to smooth the transition from one king to the next, an already reigning older king took a younger heir as a junior partner. Hatshepsut’s case reverses the normal order of things, for the older Hatshepsut became the senior partner to an already ruling younger king. Nevertheless, despite her seniority, she did not establish her own regnal years but used those of Thutmose III.

Unfortunately, Egyptian texts tell us little about Hatshepsut’s unusual assumption of the kingship. We might surmise that Hatshepsut simply did not want to hand over power to Thutmose III when he came of age and preempted this event by becoming king herself. Whatever the reason, it seems reasonable to assume that Hatshepsut’s political maneuvering must have been supported by a number of important officials in the government— not because Hatshepsut, as a woman, needed the support of men, but because an accession so irregular seems improbable without proponents in at least part of the all-male bureaucracy.

A number of officials from the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III left monuments that name Hatshepsut or both kings together and display texts referring to Hatshepsut’s favor. The most famous of these officials is Senenmut, known to us from an exceptionally large number of monuments dating to Hatshepsut’s regency and reign. During the regency most of Senenmut’s titles connect him to the royal household and show that he administered the estates of both Hatshepsut and her daughter, Neferura, for whom he was also a tutor. After Hatshepsut’s accession, he assumed one of his most important positions, “steward of Amun,” which involved administering the estates belonging to the god Amun. Given the riches that had accumulated in the name of Amun and Hatshepsut’s devotion to the god, Senenmut’s position as steward of Amun no doubt brought him status, power and wealth. Contrary to what is often alleged, there is no evidence that he was Hatshepsut’s lover.

One suspects that these officials and others had their own reasons for supporting Hatshepsut’s bid for the throne. One can imagine that if they had already gained the queen’s favor during the regency, they may have preferred to continue serving her than to risk the possibility that Thutmose III, coming of age, might want to replace them with younger officials of his choice. Some may have respected Hatshepsut’s skills as a ruler. Others, perhaps, saw an opportunity of gaining favor and wealth through supporting her.

Although the backing of enough officials was vital to the practical workings of her coup, Hatshepsut still needed to legitimize her rule ideologically by fulfilling the traditional cosmic duties of a king, including satisfying the gods and upholding the correct order of the universe. One of the major duties of a king was to build for the gods and ensure the continuation of their cults, and Hatshepsut turned out to be a prolific builder of temples and shrines, especially in the area surrounding Thebes.

Even before she became king, Hatshepsut built at the temple of Amun at Karnak. After her accession, she remodeled the interior of the temple, erecting a sanctuary for the sacred boat of Amun, as well as a series of rooms around it decorated with reliefs in which she offers to or receives favors from a variety of deities. In regnal year 16 she set up a pair of soaring, granite obelisks sheathed in electrum, supposedly to celebrate her sed-festival, a ritual associated with the renewal of kingship that was traditionally held after a reign of 30 years.

On the south side of the temple she built the eighth pylon at right-angles to the temple’s main east-west axis—marking the processional route that led to the temple of the goddess Mut (where she also undertook building projects) and then continued to the site where the temple of Luxor stands today. Along the route she erected chapels where the bark of Amun—the divine boat used to carry a statue of the god in procession—could be set down for the performance of rituals. At Luxor a bark chapel built by Hatshepsut survives today, though it was heavily reworked by Ramesses II (1290–1224 B.C.), who incorporated it into the forecourt he added to the temple built by Amenhotep III (1391–1353 B.C.) for the celebration of the Opet-festival. During this annual festival the statue of Amun was placed in its bark and carried from the temple of Karnak to Luxor, where rituals were performed to renew the divine aspect of the king. The earliest depictions of this event are found on Hatshepsut’s bark sanctuary at Karnak.

Hatshepsut also constructed a tomb for herself in the Valley of the Kings—the traditional burial place of 18th dynasty kings, located on the Nile’s west bank at Thebes—abandoning the tomb previously made for her. For the site of her funerary temple, she chose the bay in the desert cliffs, now known as Deir el-Bahri, where the great 11th Dynasty king Nebhepetra Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 B.C.) had built his funerary complex more than 500 years before. The site had already been used in the 18th Dynasty for temples of Amenhotep I and Thutmose II, but Hatshepsut’s plans, more grandiose than her predecessors’, involved demolishing the mudbrick temple of Amenhotep and remodeling the building begun by Thutmose. Its colonnade-fronted terraces echo the architecture of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep’s temple and reflect a conscious use of Middle Kingdom models characteristic of the first half of the 18th Dynasty.

Outside Thebes, Hatshepsut ordered building projects at Elephantine, Kom Ombo, Gebel es-Silsila and Armant in Upper Egypt; further north, in Middle Egypt, she constructed two rock-cut shrines at Beni Hasan. Outside Egypt, in Nubia, Hatshepsut built temples at Buhen, Semna, Faras and Qasr Ibrim.

Hatshepsut’s building program was intended to leave a permanent record of her correct performance of the kingly role vis-à-vis the gods, in order to legitimize her rule. A number of texts and images within these monuments were devoted to the same end. In her funerary temple, a series of scenes with accompanying texts depicts Hatshepsut’s divine birth, recounting how Amun-Ra came to Queen Ahmose in the guise of her husband and impregnated her; Hatshepsut, the physical daughter of the god, was therefore destined from birth to be king. Though the idea of the king’s divine birth dates to at least the Middle Kingdom, these scenes are the earliest surviving example of the myth. Hatshepsut was therefore simply applying to herself a current belief about the divine paternity of the king. Another series of scenes and texts recounts how Thutmose I presented his daughter to the court as his heir when she was still a child.

On the walls of the bark sanctuary at Karnak, Hatshepsut claims to have been selected by an oracle of Amun to become king, probably during the reign of her father. A text on the south side of the eighth pylon built by Hatshepsut records a speech in which Thutmose I praises Amun for making Hatshepsut king and petitions the god to grant her a prosperous reign.

All of these texts present the idea that Hatshepsut was chosen to rule by her father and the gods, and are clearly “fictitious.” However, every king’s life before accession was similarly “fictionalized.” Royal texts frequently describe how the king was destined to rule from birth or even from conception. (Although, with the high rate of infant and childhood mortality in ancient Egypt, no one could tell which of the princes born to a king would actually survive to inherit the throne. Once one of them actually became king, it became clear that his destiny was different from that of ordinary human beings.) Therefore, texts were designed to express the special status of the king in whose human body resided the ka of divine kingship. By thus constructing her life prior to her accession, Hatshepsut was using an accepted royal formula to mark her special status and legitimize her position as ruler.

Hatshepsut’s interaction with Amun-Ra is further displayed in her funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri, in scenes depicting the expedition she sent to Punt, probably on the coast of modern Eritrea (located north of Ethiopia). At Amun-Ra’s command, Hatshepsut ordered her men to bring back to Thebes a variety of exotic produce—incense trees, ivory, ebony, gold, monkeys, leopard skins—for the use of the god. At one time, it was thought that she gave pride of place in her temple to this expedition because, unlike male kings (including her father and co-regent), she had no campaigns of conquest to record. Scholars decided that, as a woman, Hatshepsut would not have been interested in military matters. However, 30 years ago Donald Redford presented textual evidence, albeit scattered and fragmentary, for military campaigns during Hatshepsut’s reign.⁵ She, like her male predecessors, did indeed believe in exerting Egypt’s military role in the world at large.

There can be no doubt that Hatshepsut’s reign was prosperous and successful. She effectively performed the role of a legitimate Egyptian king, building for the gods, provisioning their cults and undertaking military campaigns. Like all kings, she claimed to have been the physical offspring of Amun, special from birth, chosen by the gods to rule. However, she never ruled alone but always as the senior partner in a co-regency with Thutmose III. Finally, in regnal year 22, Hatshepsut disappeared, leaving her co-regent as the sole ruler of Egypt. What happened to her is another enigma, although it is simplest to assume that she died a natural death.

A curious thing happened after Hatshepsut’s death. Her monuments, which proclaimed her king, were attacked and her images and names erased, often to be replaced by those of Thutmose I, Thutmose II or Thutmose III. To scholars who believed that she was an unprincipled woman who usurped her stepson’s throne, these attacks seemed like a just reprisal against a hated stepmother. But in 1966 the Egyptologist Charles Nims published an article that strongly suggested that these erasures did not take place until late in Thutmose III’s 54-year reign—after regnal year 42.,⁶ Although this view has been challenged, it has been strongly defended by Peter Dorman.⁷ If Nims and Dorman are correct, we can hardly blame Thutmose III’s mutilation of Hatshepsut’s monuments on an intense hatred for his senior co-regent, aunt and stepmother. So we are left with yet another enigma: Why were Hatshepsut’s monuments attacked? Was it because Thutmose III finally came to believe that a female king violated the principles of maat, the correct order of the universe, or was there perhaps another reason?

In regnal year 42—the year that Thutmose III ended his great series of military campaigns in Asia—his son, Amenhotep II, was just nine years old. Could it be that Thutmose’s health was deteriorating enough to convince him that he would die soon, leaving his young heir in need of a regent, who, if female, might try to emulate Hatshepsut? By attempting to rub Hatshepsut’s name from the historical record, was Thutmose III trying to prevent a repetition of his own history?

If so, his actions turned out to be unnecessary. Thutmose III lived another 12 years, and by the time he handed on the throne, Amenhotep II was a young adult. (He became king at 19 but served as his father’s junior co-regent for two years.) By then, however, Hatshepsut’s memory had been eradicated, and her name was omitted from later king lists, which recorded the line of legitimate rulers. Nevertheless, the erasure of her name and image was not complete. Traces of the female king have survived the passing of centuries, revealing something of the life of Egypt’s enchanting female pharaoh.

The story of Hatshepsut is at first glance simple. She was the daughter of King Thutmose I, wife of King Thutmose II and mother of his daughter, Neferura. Upon her husband’s death (c. 1479 B.C.), she became queen regent of Egypt, ruling in place of the young heir who technically occupied the throne: Thutmose III, Thutmose II’s son by another wife. Between years 2 and 7 of Thutmose III’s reign, Hatshepsut adopted the full titulary of a king and ruled as Thutmose III’s co-regent and senior partner. By regnal year 22 she had disappeared from the scene, leaving Thutmose III […]