Amarna - The Sacred City of Akhetaten

What is Akhetaten / el-Amarna?
Akhetaten (or el-Amarna, as it is called now), is a city that was built by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Nefertiti founded a new monotheist religion and they wanted to convert the country somehow, but they realized that the power of Thebes and its priests is very challenging, so they wanted to move the capital to a new city, thus Akhetaten was founded, for the sole purpose of praising the new monotheist god, Aten.

What makes Akhetaten unique is the fact that the spot wasn't occupied before the city was built, and was abandoned right after the city's short life as a capital.

Posters of el-Amarna/Akhetaten.
There are a few posters taken from the actual site of el-Amarna. They are available online if you want to buy one of them. If you click on one of these pictures, you will be taken to a page where you will find the price and the details of each picture, the sizes and prices vary, but basically, the average size is 18 x 24 inches. A good idea if you want to hang them on your wall. Let's take a look:


Books about el-Amarna:
Though el-Amarna city had a very short life, it represents a very important era of ancient Egypt history, many books were completely dedicated just for that city and the innovation it represented both on the spiritual and architectural sides.



Please note that the last book "Amarna Sunset" takes on the ending of el-Amarna period and the restoration of the old Theban way of life. It is still very interesting, though.

Ramses II

The upper half of a black granite
 seated statue of Ramses II wearing
the Blue or War Crown (khepresh).
 Discovered by Drovetti, it is probably
 the finest existing portrait of  the king.
 Turin Museum.

Ramses II, who acceded to power at the age of 25, can rightly be said to merit his popular title, 'Ramses the Great'. During his long reign of 67 years, everything was done on a grand scale. No other pharaoh constructed so many temples or erected so many colossal statues and obelisks. No other pharaoh sired so many children. Ramses' 'victory' over the Hittites at Kadesh was celebrated in one of the most repeated Egyptian texts ever put on record. By the time he died, aged more than 90, he had set his stamp indelibly on the face of Egypt.

As a young prince, Ramses was imbued with the military tradition established by his grandfather, after whom he was named. From his earliest years all hopes for the new dynasty were pinned on him. At the age of ten he was recognized as 'Eldest King's Son' by title (despite there being no other, his elder brother having died long before), and by his mid-teens he is found associated with Seti as a diminutive figure in the reliefs of the Libyan campaigns at Karnak. Ramses was allowed to participate in Seti's subsequent campaigns against the Hittites in Syria. The young prince rode well in harness alongside his experienced father, learning his trade of statecraft. Ramses is often found referred to in inscriptions, overseeing the cutting of obelisks from the granite quarries at Aswan, involved in Seti's great building projects, and also inaugurating his own (smaller) temple to Osiris at Abydos. Many inscriptions of up-and-coming young men attest to Seti's keen and acute eye in spotting the high flyers, who were to grow up alongside Ramses and serve him well in his turn (although he outlived most of them).

Medical Profession in Ancient Egypt

Painted wooden stele depicting the statue of
the god Horus, to whom a sick man is bringing
gifts, Third Intermediate Period.
The Museum of Louvre
N. 3657. Paris

In Egypt, as in most early civilizations, men felt secure when they were at peace with the transcendental world and, because religion and magic dominated all aspects of life (as far as Egyptology today understands), both magico-religious and empirico-rational medicine existed side by side.
According to a Christian writer, Alexandrinus Clemens, living in Alexandria in about 200 AD, the priests of early-dynastic Egypt had written the sum total of their knowledge in 42 sacred books kept in the temples and carried in religious processions. Six of these books were concerned totally with medicine and dealt with anatomy, diseases in general, surgery, remedies, diseases of the eye and diseases of women. No example of these books survive nor of the anatomy books said to have been written by Athothis, second Pharaoh of the First Dynasty.
During the Old Kingdom the medical profession became highly organized, with doctors holding a variety of ranks and specialities. The ordinary doctor or Sinw was outranked by the imy-r sinw (overseer of doctors) the wr sinw (chief of doctors), and smsw sinw (eldest of doctors) and the shd sinw (inspector of doctors). Above all these practitioners was the overseer of doctors of Upper and Lower Egypt. There is evidence that a

List of Ancient Pyramids of Egypt - Major Egyptian Pyramids: Pyramids 101: Phase 1

Who was Tutankhamun?

Akhenaten, male or female?

Basins and Pyramids: Pyramids in the Landscape: Pyramids 101: Phase 1

Khufu's Great Pyramid by Tammie Richards - Khufu Contest

The Egyptian Gods

The existance of the Egyptian gods pre-dates the existance of the nation itself, having existed before the language and the country makes you wonder if Egypt was all built in accordance to the religious doctrine it held, which wouldn't be a surprise that the most mysterious and ancient nation was a just another church-based country!

Anubis, one of the major
Egyptian gods

The Creation of the Egyptian Gods:

Seems like first Egyptian gods were actually animal deities, still no surprise, the human race always feared then worshipped any natural force that had more might than his body did, or simply that was way over his head. Cows and falcons are probably the first to be worshipped, followed by jackals, cattles, rams and gazelles. Though we are not sure if these animals were directly worshipped, we are pretty sure that they were at least divinly repsected and appreciated.

The Need of the Egyptian Gods:
Needless to say, huamans always needed fear in order to get diciplined, and that was basically why the ancient Egyptian, in a way or the other, chosen to have as many as strong gods as he could ever have, and just like its Hindu counterpart, the Egyptian god usually had a certain job to take care of, while anther fellow god would take the responsibility of another aspect of life.

Pharaohs have always been pictured as the incarnation of the god Horus, and they ruled by his name, and that would automatically mean they were believed to be perfect and complete, and as a result to that, they owned every thing in the Two Lands (Egypt), they could dictate any part of people's social and spiritual life. So the rulers of Egypt always understood that the main (and maybe the only) source of power they had was religion, and to lose that source, means they no longer rule.

The Temples of the Egyptian Gods:
As little as we know about the origin of religion in Egypt, we seem to know less about the origin of temples in ancient Egypt. At the time religious doctrines started to develope in ancient Egypt, the Egyptian architect was not yet fully developed, which resulted similar shapes of all buildings in the "country", makes it so hard for us to understand what is holly and what is not!

However, it is now believed that the Nabata Playa Ancient Stones seem to be the first religious structure in the nation and the continent, dating back to 6000 years ago. The sites lays on the shore of an ancient lake that doesn't exist anymore. It contains some 2.75-meter-high stones that were brought from more than a mile away! Many of those stones were carefully lined up in east-to-west direction. Though the site's builders were not confirmed to be related to pharaohs or Egyptians, the site's holds the same features that all later Egyptian temples held, the water and the sun.

Of course the temples didn't remain that humble for too long, it was just a matter of time before they developed in every single way. Having gold figures and fancy furniture and halls. No wonder they had to be that way, since they were believed to be somehow the houses of god on earth, so it reflected the richness of the pharaohs and the gods.

The Death of the Egyptian Gods:
The ancient Egyptian mind didn't seem to have a problem imagining the death of gods, no matter what the term would be, "death" was the destiny of some ancient Egyptian gods. The god Osiris who was killed by Seth, was never stated to be "dead", but the conception is unmistakenabely the same. He was actually killed twice!

Apart from the real death, the technical death met many (of course all now) Egyptian gods throughout the history. The most magnificent death of gods is clearly seen when looking at Akhenaten's life. Phataoh Akhenaten (also known as the Heretic King) was the first to call for the worship of one god, but in order to acheive that goal, all old gods had to be abandoned, names of previous gods were sometimes erased from temples and holly scripts. He and his wife Nefertiti succeeded to take away the old relgion from the people and to hand them a new one, a new city, a new temple and a new god were found. But seems like they took religion from people but couldn't take people from it! After Akhenaten's death, the old religion was restored and the new one god was put aside. Once again, another Egyptian god dies.

Queen Hatshepsut

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Thutmose II married his half-sister, the King's Daughter, King's Sister and King's Great Wife Queen Hatshepsut who, having inherited the office of God's Wife of Amun from Meritamun, used this as her preferred title. Egypt's new queen started to build a suitable consort's tomb in the remote Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida, on the Theban west bank. Here her quartzite sarcophagus was inscribed with a prayer to the mother goddess Nut: 

The King's Daughter, God's Wife, King's Great Wife, Lady of the Two Lands, Queen Hatshepsut, says, 'O my mother Nut, stretch over me so that you may place me amongst the undying stars that are in you, and that I may not die.' 

The Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida tomb would be abandoned before the burial shaft could be completed. 

Hatshepsut the Consort 

Queen Hatshepsut bore her brother one daughter, Neferure, but no son. And so, when Thutmose II died unexpectedly after maybe 13 years on the throne, the crown passed to Thutmose III, a son born in the royal harem to the lady Isis. As the new king was still an infant, and as the new King's Mother was not considered sufficiently royal to act as regent, Queen Hatshepsut was called upon to rule on behalf of her stepson. Thutmose III, proud of his mother and perhaps eager to inflate his lineage, would later promote Isis posthumously to the roles of King's Great Wife and God's Wife. We may see Isis on a pillar in Thutmose's tomb (KV 34) where she stands behind her son in a boat. Here she wears a simple sheath dress and tripartite wig but no crown. In contrast, a statue of Isis recovered from Karnak shows her wearing a modius and double uraeus. 

His son has risen in his place as King of the Two Lands. He [Thutmose III] ruled on the throne ofhe who had begotten him. His sister, the God's Wife Queen Hatshepsut, governed the land and the Two Lands were advised by her. Work was done for her and Egypt bowed its head.

For several years Queen Hatshepsut acted as a typical regent, allowing the young Thutmose to take precedence in all activities. But already there were signs that Queen Hatshepsut was not afraid to flout tradition. Her new title, Mistress of the Two Lands, was a clear reference to the king's time-hon-oured title Lord of the Two Lands. More unusually, she commissioned a pair of obelisks to stand in front of the gateway to the Karnak temple of Amun. Obelisks - tall, thin, tapering shafts of hard stone whose pyramid-shaped tops, coated with gold foil, sparkled in the strong Egyptian sunlight - were understood to represent the first rays of light that shone as the world was created. Very difficult to cut and transport, and so difficult to erect that modern scientists have not yet managed to replicate the procedure, they had thitherto been the very expensive gifts of kings to their gods. By the time her obelisks were cut,  Queen Hatshepsut too had become a king, and her new titles were engraved with pride on her monuments. 

Hatshepsut the King!

By year 7 Queen Hatshepsut had been crowned king of Egypt, acquiring in the process a full king's titulary of five royal names - Horus, Powerful-of-Kasi Two Ladies, Flourishing-of-Years; Female Horus of Fine Gold, Divine-of-Diadems; King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare (Truth is the Soul of Re); Daughter of Ra, Khenmet-Amun Hatshepsut (the One who is joined with Amun, the Foremost of Women). Thutmose III was 

never forgotten. He was scrupulously acknowledged as a co-ruler and the now-joint regnal years continued to be counted from the date of his accession, but Queen Hatshepsut was undeniably the dominant king of Egypt. Only towards the end of Queen Hatshepsut's life would Thutmose acquire anything like equal status with his co-ruler. 

We can chart Queen  Hatshepsut's journey from conventional consort to king in a series of contrasting images. A stela now housed in Berlin Museum shows us the royal family shortly before Thutmose's death. The young king stands facing the sun god Re. Directly behind him stands his step-mother/mother-in-law Ahmose wearing the vulture headdress and uraeus topped with tall feathers. Queen Hatshepsut stands dutifully behind her mother, her plain sheath dress and simple platform crown emphasizing the fact that here she is very much the junior queen. The modius or plat-form crown, decorated with flower stalks, was worn by a variety of not particularly prominent New Kingdom royal women. Two years after the death of Thutmose II, images carved at the Semna Temple, Nubia, show an adult-looking Thutmose III, sole King of Upper and Lower Egypt and Lord of the Two Lands, receiving the white crown from the ancient Nubian god Dedwen. Finally Hatshepsufs Red Chapel at Karnak shows Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III standing together. The two kings are identical in appearance, both wearing the kilt and the blue crown, botb carrying a staff and an ankh, and both with breastless male bodies. Their cartouches confirm that it is Thutmose who stands behind Queen Hatshepsut in the more junior position. 

Queen Hatshepsut offers us no explanation for her unprecedented assumption of power. It seems that there was no opposition to her elevation although, of course, it is very unlikely that any such opposition would have been recorded. We can only guess that it was precipitated by a political or theological crisis requiring a fully adult king. Carved into the walls of her religious monuments Queen Hatshepsut does, however, offer some justification. Queen Hatshepsut is entitled to claim the throne because she is not only the beloved daughter and intended heir of the revered Thutmose I (the less impressive Thutmose II being conveniently forgotten); she is also the daughter of the great god Amun. And he, via an oracle revealed to Queen Hatshepsut herself, has proclaimed his daughter King of Egypt.

Divine Birth of Queen Hatshepsut:

Queen Hatshepsut's semi-divine nature is emphasized on the walls of her mortuary temple, where a cartoon-like sequence of images and a brief accompanying text tell the story of her divine birth. Amon, we learn, has fallen in love with a beautiful queen of Egypt, and has determined to father her child. In one of the few scenes showing a queen communicating directly with a god, we can view Queen Ahmose sitting unchaperoned in her boudoir. Here she is visited by Amon who, for propriety's sake, has disguised himself as her husband. Amon tells Ahmose that she has been chosen to bear his daughter, the future king of Egypt. Then he passes her the ankh that symbolizes life, and his potent perfume fills the palace. Meanwhile, in heaven, the ram-headed creator god Khnum crafts both the baby and the baby's soul on his potter's wheel. Nine months later it is time for the birth. The pregnant Ahmose, her baby bump barely visible, is led to the birthing bower by Khnum and the frog-headed midwife Heket. Here, in a scene discreetly left to the imagination, Queen Hatshepsut is born. 

Amon is overwhelmed with love for his new daughter. He takes her from Hathor the divine wet nurse, kisses her and speaks: 

Come to me in peace, daughter of my loins, beloved Maatkare, thou art the king who takes possession of the diadem on the Throne of Horus of the Living, eternally.

The temple walls show Egypt's new, naked king with an unmistakably male body; her identical and equally naked soul, too, is obviously male. But the new king's names are female, and neither Ahmose nor Amon is in any doubt over the gender of their child. The presentation of Queen Hatshepsut as a male is purely a convention, her response to the artistic dilemma that, three centuries before, saw Sobeknefru don an unhappy mixture of men's and women's clothing. As a queen Hatshepsut had been happy to be portrayed as a conventional woman: slender, pale and passive. But as a king she needed to find an image that would reinforce her new position while distancing her from the consort's role. Towards the beginning of her reign she was depicted either as a conventional woman or as a woman wearing [male] king's clothing. Two seated limestone statues recovered from Deir el-Bahari show her dressed in this hybrid manner.  Queen Hatshepsut wears the traditional headcloth and kilt. She has a rounded, feminine, unbearded face and a feminine body with breasts and an indented waist. Soon, however, she evolves into an entirely masculine king, with a man's body, male clothing, male ccessories and male ritual actions. It seems that it is the appearance of the king that matters rather than her actual gender; the masculine form of Queen Hatshepsut is happy to alternate between masculine and feminine forms of her titulary. 

Princess Neferure, the Queen of Hatshepsut:

From the time of her coronation onwards, Queen Hatshepsut was careful to behave as an entirely conventional King of Egypt; in consequence, while her story tells us a great deal about the perceived role of the king, it tells us less about the role of the queen than we might have hoped. It does, however, confirm one very important detail: that the queen was an important element of the kingship. Like any other king, Queen Hatshepsut needed a queen to fulfil the feminine aspect of her monarchy, and for this she turned to her daughter Neferure. Most of Egypt's royal children remain hidden in their nurseries throughout their childhoods and, during her father's reign, Neferure had been no exception. But following her mother's coronation, Neferure started to play an unusually prominent role - the queen's role - in public life. Neferure used the titles Lady of Upper and Lower Egypt and Mistress of the Lands and she assumed the office of God's Wife of Amun, a role that Queen Hatshepsut had been forced to abandon as it was incompatible with her kingly status. Neferure, like all other God's Wives before her, adopted this as her preferred title. Scenes carved on the walls of the Red Chapel at Karnak show Neferure as a fully adult woman performing the appropriate rituals. 

Neferure's education was clearly a matter of some importance. The young princess was taught first by the courtier Ahmose-Pennekhbet, next by Senenmut, Queen Hatshepsut's most influential advisor, and finally by the administrator Senimen. A series of hard stone statues - highly expensive, produced by the royal workshops - show Neferure and Senenmut together. Neferure has the shaven head and sidelock of youth worn by all Egyptian children. Senenmut, dressed in a heavy striated wig, assumes a typical woman's role by either holding the princess tight, or seating her on his knee and wrapping her body in his cloak. Neferure disappears 

towards the end of her mother's reign; she appears on a stela at Serabit el-Khadim in Year II, but is unmentioned in Senenmut's tomb dated to Year 16. The obvious assumption is that she has died and been buried in her tomb which lay near that built for her mother in the remote Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida. 

Senenmut, Queen Hatshepsut's Advisor 

The new king inherited her late brother's courtiers but gradually, as her reign developed, she started to pick new advisors, many of whom, like Senenmut, were men of relatively humble birth. As  Queen Hatshepsut well realized, these self-made men had a vested interest in keeping her on the throne: if she fell, they fell with her. Senenmut, Steward of Amun and tutor to Princess Neferure, enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks, and this has sparked a great deal of speculation over the precise nature of his relationship with Queen Hatshepsut. They certainly never married - marriage was not an option for a female king, as it would lead to too great a conflict of roles - but could they have been lovers? A crude piece of graffiti scrawled in a Deir el-Bahari tomb, which apparently shows a man having 'doggy-style' intercourse with a woman wearing a royal headdress, cannot be accepted as conclusive proof of anything other than the fact that the ancient Egyptians enjoyed smutty gossip as much as any other people. The fact that Senenmut carved his image into Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple - an unprecedented and daring move for a non-royal- combines with the fact that his second tomb encroached upon the Deir el-Bahari precincts to offer a more convincing argument in favour of a close bond between the two. It is difficult to imagine that Senenmut could have ordered these infringements of protocol without Queen Hatshepsut's knowledge and tacit approval. 

Queen Hatshepsut's Policy

The new king set out to maintain maat by launching an obvious assault on chaos. Foreigners were to be subdued, the monuments of the ancestors were to be restored, and the whole of Egypt was to be enhanced by a series of ambitious temple-building projects. The subduing of the foreigners was quickly achieved in a token series of military campaigns against the vassals to the south and east. The Deir el-Bahari temple again shows the Nubian god Dedwen, this time leading a series of captive Nubian towns leach depicted as a walled town or fortified cartouch bearing an obviously Nubian head) towards the victorious Queen Hatshepsut. 

Next, Queen Hatshepsut turned her attention to trade. There were missions to the Lebanon for wood, increased exploi tation of the copper and turquoise mines in Sinai and, most important of all, during Year 9, a successful trading mission to Punt. The real but almost legendary land of Punt was a source of many exotic treasures: precious resins, curious wild animals, and the ever-desirable ebony, ivory and gold. It was, however, a long way from the safety of Thebes. The exact location of Punt is now lost, but flora and fauna included in the reliefs decorating Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple suggest that it was an east African trading centresituated somewhere along the Eritrean/Ethiopian coast. The journey to this distant Utopia involved a long, hot march across 100 miles (160 km) of desert, possibly carrying a dismantled boat, to the Red Sea port of Quseir. This was followed by a sea journey along the coast, an adventure that the Egyptians, always very happy on the calm waters of the Nile, dreaded. 

Queen Hatshepsut's envoy Neshy set sail with a small but well-armed army, his precise route undisclosed. After some sharp bargaining with the chief of Punt - the temple walls show a handful of trinkets being exchanged for 

a wonderful array of goods, but doubtless they exaggerate - he returned home in triumph. Queen Hatshepsut, watching as her ships disgorged their valuable cargos at Thebes, must have been overjoyed. The safe return of her troops proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that her reign was indeed blessed by her divine father. With great perspicacity she promptly donated the best of the goods to Amun, and ordered that the epic voyage be immortalized on the Deir el-Bahari temple walls. 

Queen Hatshepsut's Projects Building

Back at home the building projects were proceeding well. It seems likely that Queen Hatshepsut instigated a temple-building project in all of Egypt's major cities, but most of these temples have been lost along with their cities, leaving the Theban monuments to stand as testimony to the prosperity of her reign. We know that there were building works in Nubia, and at Kom ambo, Hierakonpolis, Elkab, Armant and the island of Elephantine, which received two temples dedicated to local gods. In Middle Egypt, not far from Beni Hassan and the Hatnub quarries, Egypt's first two rock-cut temples were dedicated to the obscure lion-headed goddess Pakhet, 'She who Scratches', a local variant of the goddess Sekhmet, who was herself a variant of Hathor. On one of these temples, known today bits Greek name Speos Artemidos (Grotto of Artemis),  Queen Hatshepsut carved a bold statement setting out her policy of rebuilding and restoration: 

I have never slumbered as one forgetful, but have made strong what was decayed. I have raised up what was dismembered, even from the first time when the Asiatics were in Avaris of the North Land, with roving hordes in the midst of them overthrowing what had been made; they ruled without Ra.... I have banished the abominations of the gods, and the earth has removed their footprints. 

In suggesting that she has personally expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut is being more than economical with the truth; such an outrageous lie can, however, be justified if we take the view, as Queen Hatshepsut 

herself undoubtedly did, that each of Egypt's kings was a continuation of the kings who had gone before and so fully entitled to claim his deeds for his (or her) own, Her assertion that she is renewing and restoring damaged monuments does appear to be true within the modern meaning of the term, We know, for example, that she repaired the temple of Hathor at the town of Cusae, a town which, situated on the border between the Theban and Hyksos kingdoms, suffered badly during the wars that ended the 17th Dynasty, The Karnak temple benefited greatly from the new king's generosity, There was another pair of obelisks - this time entirely covered in gold foil - raised to commemorate Queen Hatshepsut's 15-year jubilee, a new bark shrine (the Red Chapel) where Amun's processional boat could rest, a new southern pylon (gateway), a new royal palace and a series of improvements to the processional routes which linked the various temples within the complex, But the most magnificent building she commissioned was a mortuary temple for herself, situated close by the Middle Kingdom tomb of Mentuhotep II in the Deir el-Bahari bay.

Deir el-Bahari, Queen Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple.

Deir el-Bahari was a multi-functional temple with a series of shrines and chapels devoted to a variety of gods. The main sanctuary was dedicated to Queen  Hatshepsut's divine father, Amun. But there was also a suite of chapels 

devoted to the royal ancestors; this included a small mortuary or memorial chapel for her earthly father, Thutmose I, and a much larger mortuary chapel for Queen Hatshepsut herself. Here, in front of  Queen Hatshepsut's cult statue, the priests could make the daily offerings of food, drink, music and incense that would allow the dead king's soul to live forever. An open-air court dedicated to the worship of the sun god Re-Herakhty balanced the dark and gloomy mortuary chapels, chapels that linked the dead with the cult of Osiris. One level down were the chapels dedicated to the god of embalming, Anubis, and to Hathor, who was not only the goddess of the Deir el-Bahari bay, but also 'Mistress of Punt'. Like many of Egypt's queens, Hatshepsut (now an ex-queen) felt a particular attraction to Hathor's predominantly female cult, and Hathor features prominently in her temple. She is present at Hatshepsut's birth and later, taking the form of a cow, suckles a newborn infant. If Amon can be considered the divine father of the king, it seems that Hathor is now his (or her) mother. 

The mortuary temple was one half of Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary provision. Her tomb, the other half, was to be in the Valley of the Kings, the now traditional cemetery for Egypt's kings. The old consort's tomb in the Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida was abandoned, but Queen Hatshepsut (perhaps concerned about her lack of time) did not try to build a replacement. Instead she started to enlarge the tomb (KV 20) which already held her father, until it became the longest and deepest tomb in the Valley. Eventually, or so she hoped, father and daughter would lie side-by-side forever in two matching yellow quartzite sarcophagi (Thutmose l's sarcophagus, a shade less magnificent than Queen Hatshepsut's own, was actually a second-hand sarcophagus originally prepared for his daughter). The two did indeed lie together for a time, but Thutmose III eventually had his grand-father reinterred in a nest of new coffins placed in a new sarcophagus in a brand new tomb (KV 38). 

The End of the Era of Queen Hatshepsut

A single stela, raised at Armant, tells us that Queen Hatshepsut died on the tenth day of the sixth month of the 22nd year of her reign. Finally Thutmose was free to embark on what would be 33 years of highly successful solo rule. First, however, he had to bury his predecessor to consolidate his claim to the throne.  Queen Hatshepsut's tomb was looted in antiquity, but included amongst the debris left by the robbers were two vases - family heirlooms? - made for Queen Ahmose-Nefertari. We have Queen Hatshepsut's sarcophagus and her matching canopic chest, and a few fragments of her furniture, but her body has vanished. All that remains is a box recovered from the Deir el-Bahari mummy cache, decorated with Queen Hatshepsut's cartouch and holding mummified tissue identified rather loosely as either a liver or a spleen. We do, however, have several nameless New Kingdom female mummies who might, or might not, be Queen Hatshepsut. Chief amongst these are the 'Elder Lady', a female mummy in her 40s recovered from a sealed side-chamber in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35) and an obese female mummy with red-gold hair discovered in the tomb of the royal nurse Sitre (KV 60). Sitre is known to have been Queen Hatshepsut's wet-nurse, and a badly damaged limestone statue shows her sitting with the young Hatshepsut (a miniature adult rather than a child) on her lap. 

Erasing Queen Hatshepsut 

Towards the end of Thutmose's reign an attempt was made to delete Queen Hatshepsut from the historical record. This elimination was carried out in the most literal way possible. Her cartouches and images were chiselled off the stone walls -leaving very obvious Queen-Hatshepsut-shaped gaps in the artwork - and she was excluded from the official history that now ran without any form of co-regency from Thutmose II to Thutmose III. At the Deir el-Bahari temple Queen Hatshepsut's numerous statues were torn down and in many cases smashed or disfigured before being buried in a pit. Over the river at Karnak there was even an attempt to wall up her obelisks. While it is clear that much of this rewriting of history occurred during the later part of Thutmose's reign, it is not clear why it happened. For many years Egyptologists assumed that it was a damnatio memoriae, the deliberate erasure of a person's name, image and memory, which would cause them to die a second, terrible and permanent death in the afterlife. This appeared to make perfect sense. Thutmose must have been an unwilling co-regent for years. What could be more natural than a wish to destroy the memory of the woman who had so wronged him? But this assessment of the situation is probably too simplistic. It is always dangerous to attempt to psychoanalyse the long dead, but it seems highly unlikely that the determined and focused Thutmose - not only Egypt's most successful general, but an acclaimed athlete, author, historian, botanist and architect - would have brooded for two decades before attempting to revenge himself on his stepmother. 

Furthermore the erasure was both sporadic and haphazard, with only the more visible and accessible images of Queen Hatshepsut being removed. Had it been complete - and, given the manpower available, there is no reason why it should not have been - we would not now have so many images of  Queen Hatshepsut. It seems either that Thutmose must have died before his act of vengeance was finished, or that he had never intended a total obliteration of her memory at all. In fact, we have no evidence to support the assumption that Thutmose hated or resented Queen Hatshepsut during her lifetime. Had he done so he could surely, as head of the army (a position given to him by Queen Hatshepsut, who was clearly not worried about her co-regent's loyalty), have led a successful coup. It may well be that Thutmose, lacking any sinister motivation, was, towards the end of his life, simply engaged in 'tidying up' his personal history, restoring Queen Hatshepsut to her rightful place as a queen regent rather than a king. By eliminating the more obvious traces of his female co-regent, Thutmose could claim all the achievements of their joint reign for himself. 

The erasure of Queen Hatshepsut's name, whatever the reason, allowed her to disappear from Egypt's archaeological and written record. Thus, when 19th-century Egyptologists started to interpret the texts on the Deir el-Bahari temple walls (walls illustrated with not one but two obviously male kings) their translations made no sense. Champollion, the French decoder of hieroglyphs, was not alone in feeling deeply confused by the obvious conflict between the words and the pictures: 

If I felt somewhat surprised at seeing here, as elsewhere throughout the temple, the renowned Moeris [Thutmose III}, adorned with all the insignia of royalty, giving place to this Amenenthe (Hatshepsut}, for whose name we may search the royal lists in vain, still more astonished was I to find on reading the inscriptions that wherever they referred to this bearded king in the usual dress of the Pharaohs, nouns and verbs were in the feminine, as though a queen were in question. I found the same peculiarity everywhere.. 

By the late 19th century the truth had been revealed and, despite her masculine appearance, Queen Hatshepsut had been restored to her rightful place as a female king.

Check The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in details

Khufu - Cheops

There are a few posters out there for Khufu and his majestic pyramid and ship, check out these for a starter:


Family Tree of Khufu / Cheops
Birth name: Khufu (Protected by Khnum) AKA Cheops/Kheops (Greek). Suphis I (Manetho)
Father: Snefru
Mother: Hetepheres I

This tiny, 3-inch (7.6-cm)
 high ivory sculpture of
Khufu (Cheops) found at
Abydos shows the king
seated on a throne, holding
a flail in his right hand against
 his right shoulder, and wearing
 the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.
 The Cartouch on the left side
of his throne is broken away,
 bur fortunately his Horus name
 remains on the right side
to identify him. Cairo Museum.

Wives: 1 Unknown queen      2 Meritates     3 Henutsen     4 Unknown Queen
Sons: 1 Djedefre     2 Kawab     3 Khafre (Chephren)      4 Djedfhor     5 Banefre     6 Khufukaef
Daughters: 1 Hetepheres II      2 Meresankh II     3 Khamerernebty I
Burial: The Great Pyramid, Giza


The Life of Khufu / Cheops

The ancient authors through whom Manetho's works survive were all agreed that the third king of the 4th Dynasty was "Suphis, the builder of the Great Pyramid, which Herodotus says was built by Cheops. Suphis convinced a contempt for the gods, but repenting of this, he composed the Sacred Books, which the Egyptians hold in high esteem". "Suphis is better known by the Greek form of Cheops and the Egyptian form Khufu. It is curious that Khufu should be placed third in line; there do not appear to be any other records of an intervening pharaoh between him and his father Snefru. The reference to his composing Sacred Book is intriguing - these do not seem to have survived in later literature although Khufu's character was severely blackened by later chronicler and strongly contrasted with the lives of his successors Chephren (Khafre) and Mycerinus (Menkaure).

Like his father, Khufu probably reigned for about 23 or 24 years, and he too seems to have initiated military expeditions to the Sinai peninsula. Rock inscriptions in the Wadi Maghara record the presence of his troops in this region, no doubt for the dual purposes of keeping the Bedouin in check and exploiting the turquoise deposits there. A now very faint inscription on a large boulder on the island of Elephantine at Aswan also indicates that the king had interests in the far south of the country - quarrying the fine Aswan red granite.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu / Cheops Pyramid

Khufu's greatest achievement was the creation of a monument that was to be recognized as the first of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one now standing: the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau.

Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops Pyramid)

Originally 481 ft or 146.6 m high (now only 451 ft or 137.5 m, having lost its top 30 ft) it was until the 19th century AD the tallest man-made building in the world -a proud record held by an ancient Egyptian architect for four and a half thousand years.

It is not known why Khufu should have turned for all its magnificence the Great Pyramid is still a puzzle. Herodotus was quoted some apocryphal figures by the priests: it took 10 years to build the causeway from the valley temple to the mortuary temple, 20 years to build the pyramid itself and the whole cost was in the region of 1600 silver talents (according to an inscription pointed out to him on the side), or just over £5 million/£43.17 million at present scrap silver prices.

Moreover, we do not know exactly how it was built. Theories about this vary, from the use of a long ramp stretching out into the desert which was continually lengthened and heightened as the pyramid rose higher, to a ramp that rose as it wound round the pyramid face following each course upwards. Neither is very satisfactory and each is rather impractical in one way or another. Herodotus said that the structure had been built as a series of terraces, raising blocks on all four sides simultaneously with the use of 'contrivances made of short timbers'. This approach was tested with some success by the late Peter Hodges, a master builder, using short lengths of timber with a metal-shod foot, and it is certainly more convincing than the other theories.

The internal layout indicates at least two changes in plan during construction. Initially there was to have been a burial chamber deep beneath the surface of the plateau; this plan was then altered to incorporate instead a small chamber, now erroneously known as the Queen's Chamber (and unfinished) within the pyramid bulk and about 50 ft (15.2 m) above ground level. Exploration in 1993 by a small robot remote-controlled camera up the south 'air' tunnel from the Queen's Chamber has revealed a small door secured by metal bolts. There is no question of access because the door is so tiny, the tunnel being only 8 inches (20.25 cm) square. The results of further investigation are eagerly awaited. The final change was for the construction of the magnificent Grand Gallery, 28 ft (8.5 m) high and closed by a corbeled roof, which led upwards to a horizontal passage that entered the King's Chamber the heart of the pyramid. Here, at the west end of the chamber, was placed a large granite sarcophagus, cut from a single block of Aswan granite. The sarcophagus must have been put in position before chamber was roofed by nine flat slabs of granite (each with an average weight of almost 45 tons), because it is about an inch too wide to through the entrance to the Ascending Corridor - an early example 'built-in' furniture. 

The exterior of the pyramid was cased with shining white Tura lime-stone, which was laid, as Herodotus rightly said, from the top downwards. This was largely robbed in the Middle Ages to build medieval Cairo. Of the great limestone mortuary temple (171 x 132 ft, 52 x 40 m) that stood before the pyramid's east face, nothing now remains except its black basalt floor. The valley temple that stood at the foot of the pyramid causeway has disappeared under the Arab village, although parts of it were observed in 1991 when new sewerage was being laid.


Around the Great Pyramid, principally on the west side, were located the tombs of the courtiers, who hoped to serve their king in death just as they had in life. On the east side are three subsidiary pyramids of Khufu's queens. Legend had it, as recounted by Herodotus, that the central pyramid, 150 ft (46 m) square, was a product of the enterprise of of Khufu's daughters, whom he had placed in a brothel in order to raise more revenue for building the Great Pyramid. In addition to payment, the princess also asked each of her clients for a block of stone, which she used to build her own pyramid. Needless to say, there is no evidence to confirm the story, although the pyramid does appear to be that of a half-sister of Khufu. The first pyramid probably belonged to his full sister-wife, and the third to another half-sister, Queen Henutsen.


Two remarkable discoveries relating to Khufu have been made in the vicinity of his pyramid: the first, found in 1925 on the east side close to the causeway, was the tomb of his mother, Queen Hetepheres; and the second, uncovered in 1954 close to the south face, was that of an intact wooden ship.

Khufu's Pyramid's Vital Statistics:
Original height: 481 ft (146.6 m)
Present height: 451 ft (137.5 m)
Angle of slope: 51°52'

Orientation: the four sides are orientated to the four cardinal points with only the minutest of errors.

Length of sides: basically 755 ft (230 m), with the greatest difference between the longest and shortest of only 8 in (20.3 cm).

Ground surface area: 13 acres, which, it has been calculated, could accommodate St Peter's in Rome, Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral in London, and the cathedrals of Milan and Florence. It is known that there rises within the mass of the pyramid a huge natural rock of unknown dimensions.

Number of blocks used to build it: somewhere in the region of 2,300,000 seperate blocks in the usual figure suggested, each averaging about 2.5 tons is weight with a maximum of 15 tons. While his officers climbed to he summit in July 1798, Napoleon apparently sat in its shadow and calculated that there was enough stone used in the three pyramids of Giza to be able to build a wall around France, 1 ft (0.3 m) wide and 12 ft (3.7 m) high. The mathematician, Gaspard Monge, who accompanied the French savants to Egypt, is said to have confirmed Napoleon's calculation.

(Right) Statue of Hemon, Khufu's master builder.
The eyes have been hacked out by robbers, and restored.
Click on the picture to enlarge.
Now in Hildesheim Museum


The royal ship of Khufu / Cheops:

During clearance work close to the south side of the Great pyramid in May 1954, Kamal el-Mallakh found a series of 41 large blocking stones, whith an average weight of 18 tons each, which had hermeticaly sealed a 101-ft (30.8-m) long ship of cedar wood. Too long for the pit intended for it, it had been carefully dismantled into 650 parts comprising 1224 pieces. After many years of patient restoration work by Hag Ahmed Youssef Moustafa (who had also been responsible for the restoration of Hetepheres' furniture), the ship was presented to the world in March 1982 in a specially designed museum which incorporated the pit in which it had lain for 4500 years. Not all the problems posed in conserving the ship have yet been solved by the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation; until they are, the opening of a second sealed pit discovered near the first will be postponed. Recent tests have indicated that it also contains a ship, but not in such good condition. It is a remarkable quirk of fate that for all the grandeur of Khufu's pyramid, his funeral boat, and the splendid style of his mother's funerary furnishings, there remains only one tiny portrait of the king himself, found by Flinders Petrie in the old temple of Osiris at Abydos in 1903. In a curious inverse ratio we find that the smallest statue represents the builder of the greatest pyramid, while some of the finest multiple statues extant from the Old Kingdom represent the builder of the smallest of the Giza pyramids, Menkaure (fifth ruler of the 4th Dynasty).

Khufu's Misconception
Herodotus believed that Khufu was a harsh king who put his citizens into hard labor and slavery. No surprise, since the Great Pyramid of Giza was the largest structure on earth at the time of Herodotus, and it was so hard for him to believe that a king could have paid workers to build such a giant structure. After all, enslaving citizens was pretty standard in the whole world.

Today we know by evidence that this giant pyramid was built by paid laborers who worked by their own will and received salary for the job they did. This evidence leaves Herodotus' beliefs in great doubts, which is mostly now believed to have been a misconception.

God-Kings of the Nile

Egyptian civilization was the greatest civilization in the ancient world,  and certainly  the most  long  lived,  lasting for more  than 3000 years. In the popular mind the immediate images are those of the pyramids,  the great Sphinx at Giza,  the  enormous  temples and  the fabulous  treasures  that have been preserved  in  the dry  sand  of  Egypt.  But what of the people who were responsible for such splendors?The ancient Egyptian pharaohs were god-kings on earth who became gods in their own right at their death. They indeed held the power of life and  death  in  their hands - their symbols of  office,  the crook and flail,
are indicative of this. They could command resources that many a modern-day state would be hard pressed to emulate. One has only to conjure with some statistics  to  realize  this.  For example,  the Great Pyramid of
Khufu (Cheops) at Giza, originally 481 ft  (146 m) high and covering 13.1 acres  (5.3 hectares) was the tallest building in the world until the 19th century AD, yet it was constructed in the mid-3rd millennium BC,  and we  still  do  not know exactly how  it was  done.  Its  base area  is  so  vast that  it  can  accommodate  the cathedrals  of  Florence,  Milan,  St Paul's and Westminster Abbey in London  and  St  Peter's  in Rome,  and  still have some space left over.
The vast  treasures of precious metal and  Egyptian jewelry that, miraculously,  escaped  the attentions of  the tomb  robbers  are almost beyond comprehension. Tutankhamun's  solid gold  inner coffin  is  a priceless work
of  art;  even  at  current  scrap  gold  prices  by weight  it would  be worth almost £1  million  (£8.63  £892,262.27million)  and his gold  funerary mask £105,000 [).  He  was  just  a  minor  pharaoh  of  little  consequence  - the wealth  of  greater  pharaohs  such  as  Ramesses  II,  by  comparison,  is unimaginable.

The names of other great pharaohs resound down the centuries. The pyramid-builders numbered not merely Khufu, but his famous predecessor  Djoser  - whose  Step  Pyramid  dominates  the  royal  necropolis  at
Saqqara  - and  his  successors  Khafre  (Chephren)  and  Menkaure (Mycerinus).  Later  monarchs included  the  warriors  Tuthmosis  III (Thutmose III), Amenhotep  III,  and  Seti  I,  not  to mention  the  infamous  heretic-king Akhenaten. Yet  part  of  the  fascination  of  taking  a  broad approach  to Egyptian  history  is  the  emergence  of  lesser  names  and  fresh  themes. The importance of royal wives in a matrilineal society and the extent to which Egyptian queens could and did reign supreme in their own right  Sobekneferu, Hatshepsut,  and Twosret  to  name but  three  - is  only  the most prominent among several newly emergent themes.
The known  170 or more pharaohs were  all  part  of  a  line of  royalty that stretched back  to  c. 3100 BC  and forward  to  the  last of  the native  pharaohs who  died  in 343  BC,  to  be  succeeded by Persians  and  then  a  Greek line of Ptolemies until Cleopatra VII  committed suicide in 30 BC. Following  the  3rd-century  BC  High  Priest  of  Heliopolis,  Manetho  whose  list  of  Egyptian  kings  has  largely  survived  in  the writings  of Christian clerics  - we can divide much of  this  enormous  span of  time into 30 dynasties. Egyptologists  today group  these dynasties into longer eras,  the  three  major  pharaonic  periods  being  the
Old,  Middle  and  New  Kingdoms,  each  of  which ended  in  a  period  of  decline  given  the  designation
'Intermediate Period'.
In  Chronicle  of the  Pharaohs,  that  emotive  and incandescent  3000-year-old  thread  of  kingship  is
traced,  setting  the  rulers  in  their  context.  Where  possible,  we  gaze  upon  the  face  of  pharaoh,  either
via reliefs and statuary or,  in some rare and thought provoking  instances,  on  the  actual  face  of  the
mummy of  the royal  dead. Across  the centuries  the artist's  conception  reveals  to  us  the  god-like  com
placency  of  the  Old  Kingdom  pharaohs,  the  care worn  faces of the rulers of the Middle Kingdom, and
the powerful and confident  features  of  the militant  New Kingdom  pharaohs.  Such  was  their  power  in
Egypt,  and  at  times  throughout  the  ancient  Near East,  that Shelley's words,  'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!',  do  indeed ring  true as a reflection of  their omnipotence.

Egypt and  the Nile 

Egypt  is a  land of extreme geographical contrasts, recognized by  the ancient Egyptians  in  the names that  they gave to  the two diametrically opposed areas. The rich  narrow agricultural strip alongside  the Nile was called Kmt (Kemet or Kermet), 'The Black Land', while the  inhospitable desert was Dsrt (Desert today),  'The Red Land'. Often, in Upper Egypt,  the desert  reaches  the water's edge. 

There was also a division between  the north and the south,  the line being drawn  roughly  in  the area of modern Cairo. To  the north was Lower Egypt where  the Nile  fanned out, with  its several mouths,  to  form  the Delta (the name coming from  its inverted shape of the foutb  letter, delta,  of  the Greek alphabet). To tbe south was Upper Egypt,  stretching to Elephantine (modern Aswan). The two kingdoms, Upper and Lower Egypt, were united in c.3100 BC,  but each had  their own regalia. The low Red Crown (the deshret)  represented Lower Egypt and its symbol was  the papyrus plant. Upper Egypt was represented by  the  tall White Crown (the hedjet),  its symbol being the flowering lotus. The combined Red  and White crowns became the shmty. The two lands could also be  embodied in The Two Ladies,  respectively  the cobra 

goddess Wadjet of Buto, and  the vulture goddess Nekhbet of Nekheb.