Hatshepsut

Hatshepsut an Egyptian queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1507-1458 BC) who ruled as pharaoh, one of the few women to hold the full royal titulary of ancient Egypt. After serving as regent for her young stepson Thutmose III she took the throne in her own right, and she governed for about two decades of prosperity, ambitious temple building and long-distance trade.

Family and Accession

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I and his queen Ahmose, and she was married to her half-brother Thutmose II, by whom she had a daughter, Neferure. When Thutmose II died, his son by another woman, Thutmose III, was still a small child, and Hatshepsut became regent for the boy, an arrangement that was conventional at the beginning of a reign.

Within a few years she assumed the titles and regalia of a ruling pharaoh, and she was crowned as king. She justified her position by appeal to the god Amun, presenting herself as the god's chosen daughter who had been foretold and brought up for kingship, and she commissioned reliefs and texts that proclaimed the divine sanction of her rule.

She was not the first woman to exercise royal power in Egypt, but she was unusual in taking the full pharaonic titulary and in ruling for so long in her own name. She appears in some monuments in female dress and in others with the traditional male kilt and false beard of kingship, adapting the conventions of royal imagery to a reign that had no established precedent.

Reign and Government

Her reign of roughly two decades appears to have been largely peaceful and materially successful. She directed the government, appointed officials and priests, and supervised an energetic programme of building and restoration. Her steward Senenmut, a man of obscure origin who rose to high office, was among her most trusted administrators and the tutor of her daughter.

The monument that best expresses her reign is the terraced temple at Deir el-Bahri in western Thebes, designed by Senenmut and dedicated to Amun and to her own mortuary cult. Its colonnaded terraces rising against the cliffs count among the masterpieces of Egyptian architecture, and its reliefs record the great events and legitimating myths of her rule.

She restored temples and monuments neglected in earlier reigns and built extensively at Thebes and elsewhere, including obelisks whose transport and erection the reliefs describe. Prosperity and order at home, rather than conquest abroad, are the themes her inscriptions emphasise, and the record suggests that the country enjoyed stability and wealth during her governance.

The Trade Expedition to Punt

The most celebrated enterprise of her reign was a trading expedition to the land of Punt, probably located on the coast of the Red Sea to the south, whose location has been debated for centuries. The expedition returned with myrrh and frankincense trees, ivory, ebony, gold, skins and other exotic goods, and it brought back the plants by which incense could be produced at home.

The great reliefs in her temple at Deir el-Bahri depict the voyage in remarkable detail, showing the ships, the goods, the houses of the Puntites and their queen, a figure of memorable corpulence. The scenes are a precious source for the ethnography of the region and for the mechanics of Egyptian trade in the Eighteenth Dynasty.

The expedition is presented as a religious as well as a commercial event, undertaken for the god Amun, whose cult required the incense it obtained. It brought wealth and prestige to Egypt and to the throne, and it stands among the earliest detailed records of long-distance trade between the Nile and the wider Red Sea world.

Monuments and Religious Patronage

Hatshepsut was one of the most prolific builders of her dynasty. In addition to the temple at Deir el-Bahri she erected the chapels and obelisks of the temple at Karnak, including one obelisk that still stands, and she endowed shrines and statues in many parts of Egypt. Her works show confidence and originality in architecture and a deep commitment to the cult of Amun.

Her building at Karnak included a shrine for a barque of the god and other structures whose inscriptions assert her role as patron of the divine. By identifying herself with the god's family and with the goddesses associated with kingship, she placed her right to rule within the sacred order and made her monuments instruments of legitimation as well as worship.

She also maintained the tradition of royal care for the dead through her own mortuary provision, and she appears in association with Maat, the principle of truth and order that the king was bound to uphold. Like other pharaohs, she presented her reign as a restoration of right order and as an act of service to the gods who sustained the state.

Later Reputation and Legacy

After her death, in a process that unfolded over decades, her images and names were defaced and removed from many monuments, most notably by order of Thutmose III or those acting in his name. The erasure has often been interpreted as an act of revenge, but scholars now see it as a later attempt to protect the legitimacy of the royal succession and the king's own line.

Her memory survived nevertheless, and the rediscovery of her temple and monuments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries restored her to history. Archaeological work at Deir el-Bahri, including the identification of possible mummified remains, has occupied Egyptologists for generations and continues to refine the picture of her reign.

Hatshepsut is remembered as the woman who became king, an able and creative ruler whose reign helped secure a dynasty and whose buildings and trade expedition stand among the striking achievements of ancient Egypt. She is studied today both as a political innovator and as the clearest example of a female pharaoh in the historical record.

See also

• Thutmose III
• Deir el-Bahri
• Senenmut
• Punt