Image Details

Composed and Commanding, the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut is shown entirely in male guise in this 8-foot-tall (excluding the podium) granite statue from Deir el-Bahri. Her skirt-like garment is actually the traditional kilt of the king, and she has the king’s crown and beard. Some have argued that Hatshepsut had herself depicted as a man to conceal the fact that the pharaoh was a woman—in a world dominated by men. Much more likely, however, she was simply drawing on the traditional iconography of kingship, in which rulers were depicted as male.