Tiy, Wife of Amenhotep III

The Wives of Thutmose III

The God's Wife of Amun

Queen Ahmose

Picture: Male Hatshepsut Depiction at Karnak

There was no expectation that women would rule Egypt as female pharaohs. On the few occasions that a woman did take the throne, the royal artists were faced with the problem of representing a woman in a man's role Here on the wall of her Red Chapel at Karnak, the female pharaoh Hatshepsut appears with a male body and traditional male regalia to run a ceremonial race alongside the Apis bull.

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Female Sphinxes in Ancient Egypt

Queen Hatshepsut. 18th Dynasty

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(18th Dynasty, part VII)

Birth name: Hat-shepsut (Foremost of Noble Ladies)

Throne name: Maat-ka-re (Truth is the Soul of Ra)

Father: Tuthmosis I

Mother: Ahmose

Husband: Tuthmosis II

Daughter: Neferure

Burial: Tomb KV 20, Valley of the Kings (Thebes)

Queen Hatshepsut

As Tuthmosis II had realized early on, Hatshepsut was a strong-willed woman who would not let anyone or anything stand in her way. By Year 2 of her co-regency with the child king Tuthmosis III she begun her policy to subvert his position. Initially, she had been content to be represented in reliefs standing behind Tuthmosis III and to be identified simply by her titles as queen and 'great king's wife' of Tuthmosis II. This changed as she gathered support from the highly pIaced officials, and it was not long before she began to build her splendid mortuary temple in the bay of the cliffs at Deir el-Bahari.
Constructed under the supervision of the queen's steward Senenmut - who was to rise to the highest offices during her reign - Hatshepsut's temple took its basic inspiration from the 12th Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep, adjacent to the site on the south. The final plan of the temple made it unique in Egyptian architecture: built largely of limestone, it rose in three broad, colonnade-fronted terraces to a central rock-cut sanctuary on the upper terrace. The primary dedication" was to Amon but there were also smaller shrines to Hathor (who earlier small cave shrine on the site) and Anubis, respectively located on the south and north sides of the second terrace. A feature of the temple was its alignment to the east directly with the great temple of Amon across the Nile at Karnak. 

The queen legitimizes her rule

Hatshepsut recorded that she had built her mortuary temple as a 'gar­den for my father Amon', Certainly, it was a garden, with small trees and shrubs lining the entrance ramps to the temple, Her focus on Amon was strengthened in the temple by a propaganda relief, known as the 'birth relief', on the walls of the northern half of the middle terrace, Here Amon is shown visiting Hatshepsut's mother, Queen Ahmose, while nearby are the appropriate deities of childbirth (the ram-headed Khnum and the frog-headed goddess Heqet) and the seven 'fairy-god­ mother' Hathors, The thrust of all this was to emphasize that she, Hatshepsut, had been deliberately conceived and chosen by Amon to be king. She was accordingly portrayed with all the regalia of kingship, even down to the official royal false beard. 

To symbolize her new position as king of Egypt, Hatshepsut took the titles of the Female Horus Wosretkau, 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt'; Maat-ka-re, 'Truth is the Soul of Re'; and Khnemetamun Hatshepsut, 'She who embraces Amon, the foremost of women'. Her coronation as a child in the presence of the gods is represented in direct continuation of the birth relief at Deir el-Bahari, subsequently confirmed by Atum at Heliopolis, The propaganda also indicated that she had been crowned before the court in the presence of her father Tuthmosis I who, accord­ing to the inscription, deliberately chose New Year's Day as an auspi­cious day for the event! The whole text is fictitious and, just like her miraculous conception, a political exercise. In pursuing this Hatshepsut makes great play upon the support of her long-dead but still highly revered father, Tuthmosis 1.

Temples and trading
The cult of Amon had gradually gained in importance during the Middle Kingdom under the patronage of the princes of Thebes. Now the more powerful New Kingdom kings associated the deity with their own fortunes. Hatshepsut had built her mortuary temple for Amon on the west bank, and further embellished the god's huge temple on the bank. Her great major-domo, Senenmut, was heavily involved in all her building works and was also responsible for the erection of a panir of red granite obelisks to the god at Karnak. Their removal from the quarries at Aswan is recorded in inscriptions there, while their actual transport butt-ended on low rafts calculated to be over 300 ft (100 m) long and 100 ft (30 m) wide, is represented in reliefs at the Deir el-Bahari temple a second pair was cut later at Aswan and erected at Karnak under the direction of Senenmut's colleague, Amunhotep; one of them still stands in the temple.
The queen did not, however, build only to the greater glory of Amon at Thebes: there are many records of her restoring temples in areas of Middle Egypt that had been left devastated under the Hyksos.
While Hatshepsut is not known for her military prowess, her reign is noted for its trading expeditions, particularly to the land of Punt (proba­bly northern Somalia or Djibouti) - a record of which is carved on the walls of her temple. It shows the envoys setting off down the Red Sea (with fish accurately depicted in the water) and later their arrival in Punt, where they exchange goods and acquire the fragrant incense trees. Other trading and explorative excursions were mounted to the turquoise mines of Sinai, especially to the area of Serabit el-Khadim, where Hatshepsut's name has been recorded.

Queen Hatshepsut's tomb
Hatshepsut had her tomb dug in the Valley of the Kings (KV 20) by her vizier and High Priest of Amon, Hapuseneb. She had previously had a tomb cut for herself as queen regnant under Tuthmosis II, its entrance 220 ft (72 m) up a 350-ft (91-m) cliff face in a remote valley west of the Valley of the Kings. This was found by locals in 1916 and investi­gated by Howard Carter in rather dangerous circumstances. The tomb had never been used and still held the sandstone sarcophagus inscribed for the queen. Carter wrote: 'as a king, it was clearly necessary for her to have her tomb in The Valley like all other kings - as a matter of fact I found it there myself in 1903 - and the present tomb was abandoned. She would have been better advised to hold to her original plan. In this secret spot her mummy would have had a reasonable chance of avoiding disturbance: in The Valley it had none. A king she would be, and a king's fate she shared.'

Hatshepsut's second tomb was located at the foot of the cliffs in the eastern corner of the Valley of the Kings. The original intention seems to have been for a passage to be driven through the rock to locate the burial chamber under the sanctuary of the queen's temple on the other side of the cliffs. In the event, bad rock was struck and the tomb's plan takes a great U-turn back on itself to a burial chamber that contained two yellow quartzite sarcophagi, one inscribed for Tuthmosis I and the other for Hatshepsut as king (p. 101). The queen's mummy has never been identified, although it has been suggested that a female mummy rediscovered in 1991 in KV 21 (the tomb of Hatshepsut's nurse) might have been her body. 

Hatshepsut died in about 1483 BC. Some suggest that Tuthmosis III, kept so long in waiting, may have had a hand in her death. Certainly he hated her enough to destroy many of the queen's monuments and those of her closest adherents. Perhaps the greatest posthumous humiliation she was to suffer, however, was to be omitted from the carved king lists: her reign was too disgraceful an episode to be recorded.

Check The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in details

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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

Egypt: Small and Upper Courts, Sanctuary - Hatshepsut Temple part VI Plan

Hatshepsut Temple (Deir El-Bahri), Luxor, Egypt: 

To the right of the Birth Colonnade is a small court (E) comprising twelve sixteen-sided columns in three rows, and leading to the chapel of Anubis, which has three chambers. The walls of the court have excellently preserved reliefs, though representations of the queen have all been damaged. On the right-hand wall (m) above the small recess is a scene of the monarch making a wine-offering to the hawk-headed Sokaris, god of the dead. On the rear wall offerings are made to Amon (to the left) and Anubis (to the right) with the sacrificial gifts heaped up before each.

The upper Court (F) was the part of the temple that suffered most severely at the hands of the Christian monks. It has been closed to visitors for more than a year for reconstruction. It includes a small vestibule leading to one of the few altars (C) to come down to us from antiquity on their original sites, and to a sacrificial hall (H) with reliefs adorning the walls. At the back of the court are a number of small recesses, some larger than others, and the central recess leads into the sanctuary itself which was cut directly into the cliff backing the temple. The granite portal forming the entrance dates from the time of the Ptolemies. The Sanctuary (I) comprises three chambers. The first two have vaulted ceilings and adjoining recesses. In the first chamber is a scene (on the upper reaches of the right-hand wall) of Hatshepsut, Thutmose III and their little daughter, Princess Ranofru, sacrificing to the barge of Amon. Behind them are the queen's father Thutmose I with his wife Ahmose and their little daughter Bitnofru. A similar scene, somewhat damaged, is represented on

the left-hand wall with Thutmose III kneeling. In the inner room of the sanctuary the reliefs show a marked deterioration from the worthy representations in the reign of Hatschepsut. This room was restored by Euergetes II.

As already mentioned, Hatshepsut's mummy was never found. It was neither in the tomb she constructed in the Valley of the Kings, nor in the one excavated south of the mortuary temple, nor in the shaft at Deir el Bahri, nor in the tomb of Amenhotep II , the 'Safety Tomb' . Whether she was poisoned that Thutmose III might take over the throne, stabbed by her lover, killed by officials jealous of Senmut's favor, or died a natural death remains a matter for speculation.

Egypt: Birth Colonnade Plan - Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Deir El Bahri) - Part V

Hatshepsut Temple (Deir El-Bahri), Luxor, Egypt:
The Birth Colonnade corresponds exactly to the Punt Colonnade. As already mentioned, it was constructed to allay concern about Hatshepsut's right to the throne. The theory of divine origin was above discussion, let alone dispute, and this is shown in a scene of the ram-headed Khnum shaping} Hatshepsut and her Ka on the potter's wheel (h) under instructions from Amon who has impregnated the queen mother. Among the particularly fine representations is that of the queen mother Ahmose (I), full with child. She radiates joy and stands dignified in her pregnancy, smiling a smile of supreme contentment as she is led to the birth room.Unfortunately most of the scene in which Amon and the queen mother are borne to the heavens by two goddesses seated on a lion-headed couch, is badly damaged. But the grotesque figure of the god Bes can be seen in the lower row (j).
In the scene of the actual birth the queen mother sits on a chair which is placed on a couch held aloft by various gods. This in turn stands upon an other couch also supported by gods. The queen mother has a retinue of female attendants. Hathor then presents Hatshepsut to Amon and the twelve Kas of th e divine child are suckled by twelve goddesses (k) . Hatshepsut and her Ka have been erased but in the scene at the end of the wall (I) they pass through the hands of various goddesses who record the divine birth.
Hatshepsut's mother is shown in the presence of the ibis-headed Thoth, the ram-headed Khnum and the frog-headed Heket. She also converses with Amon who tells her that her daughter shall exercise kingship throughout the land. By depicting Hatshepsut as a boy and by repeating the theme of Amon laying a hand of blessing on her shoulder, the most important prejudices against her rule are overcome.

Egypt : Shrine of Hathor Plan - Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Deir El Bahri) - Part IV

Hatshepsut Temple (Deir El-Bahri), Luxor, Egypt: 

To the left of the Colonnade of Punt stands the Shrine of Hathor (D) . It has two roofed-in colonnades with Hathor columns leading to the shrine itself which comprises three chambers, one behind the other , and each with several recesses. In the colonnaded court is a large sacrificial scene on the southern wall (d) showing a boat containing the Hathor-cow with Queen Hatshepsut drinking from the udder. On the rear western wall is a representation of Thutmose II (replacing Hatshepsut) having his hand licked by the Hathor-cow.

In the first chamber (e) Hatshepsut or Thutmose III is represented with several of the deities. The color is excellent, especially on the ceiling which is decorated with stars on a blue sky. The second room (f) shows Hatshepsut (scraped) making offerings to Hathor. who stands on the sacred barge beneath the canopy. This

is a relief of unusual beauty. Ehi, son of Horus, is the little nude boy who holds a sistrum in front of the queen. The third room (g) has an unusual pointed roof and the wall reliefs show Hatshepsut (on each of the side walls) drinking from the udder of the cow, Hathor, with Amon standing before them. On the back wall is another particularly beautiful relief of Hatshepsut standing between Hathor and Amon with the latter holding before her face the hieroglyph symbol of life.

Egypt : Punt Colonnade Plan - Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut Plan (Deir El Bahri) - Part III

Hatshepsut Temple (Deir El-Bahri), Luxor, Egypt:
The Punt Colonnade commemorates an expedition ordered by Queen Hatshepsut to the Land of Punt (in the East Africa\Somalia area) to bring back myrrh and incense trees to be planted on the terraces of the temple. The relief tells us that Amon himself ordered the expedition and it appears that Hatshepsut not only carried out the divine will but made the expedition a major mission.

On the southern wall (II) we can see the village in Punt where the houses are constructed over water with ladders leading up to the entrances. We can see the mayor of the city, the inhabitants, the grazing cattle and even the village dog. The Egyptian envoy and his entourage are greeted in welcome and are shown presenting merchandise for barter. The fat, deformed queen of Punt is there. The hieroglyphics relate that this illustrious monarch traveled by donkey and, with obvious wit, the artists have shown the little donkey itself. Throughout the span of Egyptian history, from pre-dynastic times to the fall of the empire, it was not often that deformed or physically handicapped persons were sculpted or drawn . The few that were belonged to the earlier dynasties and were people of the lower classes. The portrayal of the queen of Punt suffering from the swollen legs of elephantiasis, and without even a royal carriage for transport, makes one feel that neither Hatshepsut nor her artists had much respect for her.

On the back wall at (b) the Egyptian fleet sets sail, arrives in Punt and we see the transportation of the incense trees planted in small tubs (top row) and on board the vessel (lower row). These will be carried back to Deir el Bahri, there to be planted in the court. In tact the roots are still on site to this day. One cannot but feel, divine will not with standing, that more than a little of Hatshepsut's whim and fancy went into the elaboration of the whole mission. In a joyous representation at the center of the long back wall (c) the queen (defaced) can be seen offering the fruits of her expedition to Amon: incense trees, wild game, cattle, electrum and bows. The whole mural speaks of success and pleasure.

Egypt : Lower and Central Courts - Hatshepsut's Temple Plan - Deir El Bahri - Part II

Hatshepsut Temple (Deir El-Bahri), Luxor, Egypt: We ascend the temple of Deir el Bahri from the lower court where two colonnades have been restored. These comprise twenty-two columns on each side arranged in double rows. In the southern colonnade is a scene showing two obelisks being transported by water (those Hatshepsut had erected at Karnak). The first row shows them on the deck of the barge and below a trumpeter leads a group of archers to the inauguration ceremony.
Passing between the two colonnades we come to the central court (Plan 12 A), which leads to the upper terrace. We are now faced with two famous colonnades. On the left (B) is the Colonnade of the Expedition to Punt. On the right (C) is the Birth Colonnade.

Egypt : Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut Plan (Deir El Bahri)

Hatshepsut Temple (Deir El-Bahri), Luxor, Egypt:
Framed by steep cliffs and poised inelegant relief, stands the temple of Deir el Bahri . Justly deserving its name Most Splendid of All, it was the inspiration of the beautiful Queen Makere Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose I. What strikes one. first when approaching this temple is its unity with nature. Far from being belittled by the stark purity of the cliffs behind, the temple was so designed that the cliffs form a backcloth.

Hatshepsut, whose royal line age to the Great Royal wife of Ahmose made her the only lawful heir among Thutmose I's children, his sons being by minor wives, was prevented by her sex from succeeding as Pharaoh. She consequently married her half-brother Thutmose II. During his reign and her subsequent co-regency with Thutmose III she retained power in her capable hands.
To appreciate the temple of Deir el Bahri one must know a little of the character of the beautiful woman who conceived it. She was indisputably iron-willed and not willing to let the fact that she was a woman stand in her way. She assumed a throne name-Makere. She wore a royal shirt and ceremonial beard, the badges of kingship.She proved her right to the throne in numerous reliefs of her divine birth.

Once Hatshepsut had secured her right to the throne she embarked on the building of temples and monuments and also on the restoration of damaged sanctuaries. This was perhaps especially important to her since she could hardly record her name in history through military conquest and sought to do so through architectural magnificence. The obelisks she had erected in Karnak temple were so placed that the glittering tips should inundate the Two Lands just as it appears in the horizon of heaven. And she planned her mortuary temple to be no less spectacular. Her architect Senmut, whilst drawing inspiration from the adjacent 11th Dynasty temple of the Pharaohs Mentuhotep II and III, carried it out on a very much larger scale. Adopting the idea of the terrace and adding an extra tier, he made such imposing use of it that he deserves special credit. He designed a terraced sanctuary comprising courts, one above the other with connecting inclined planes at the center. Shrines were dedicated to Hathor and Anubis and chambers devoted to the cult of the queen and her parents.

It was a labor of love, for Senmut, who first entered the service of Hatshepsut as tutor to her daughter Neferure, had ambitions and abilities that took him high on the ladder of success. He not only ended with no fewer than forty titles but conducted himself as a member of the royal family, enjoying privileges and prerogatives never before enjoyed by a man of humble birth. He was Hatshepsut's supporter and lover and doubtless also her political adviser. He was also granted a privilege accorded to no official before or after : that of constructing his tomb near the mortuary temple of his monarch.

Hatshepsut had two tombs. Her body was found in neither. The first she had dug in the Valley of the Kings, where all members of the royal family were laid to rest in the 18th Dynasty. The second, after she became monarch, was in the Taker Zeid Valley, south of Deir el Bahri and overlooking the Valley of the Kings. The former tomb was so designed that the corridors, burrowed 213 meters beneath the barrier hill, should lead to the tomb chamber itself directly beneath the mortuary temple. It was as though, while wishing to construct her tomb in the royal valley, she wanted at the same time to conform to the ancient practice of linking the tomb with the mortuary temple. She never achieved her goal. Bad rock or other causes led to the passage being continued in a swerve of 98 meters below ground level and then abandoned. It is devoid of relief and inscription and, apart from limestone slabs relating chapters from the Book of the Dead in red and black sketch form, is a rather pathetic and crude passage. In her red sand stone sarcophagus the body of her father Thutmose I had been laid to rest, until the priests of the 20th Dynasty removed his mummy to the shaft of Deir el Bahri for safe keeping. In fact Hatshepsut's sarcophagus had been enlarged to receive his body. Why was Thutmose I laid to rest in his daughter's tomb? Because his own had already been used by Thutmose II, who died prematurely after a short co-regency with Hatshepsut. And Hatshepsut's mummy?It probably suffered the same fate as her statues and representations in murals. For, when Thutmose III finally asserted himself and expelled her from the throne, his years of frustrated energy swelled forth in a campaign of destruction when he obliterated from every temple throughout the land, but from Deir el Bahri in particular, every reference to the female Pharaoh.

Later, when Akhenaten removed references to Amon from the temples of Egypt , the inscriptions of Deir el Bahri were further mutilated. Ramses II endeavored to restore them but the workmanship was inferior. And in this condition the beautiful temple remained, with only minor alterations taking place until Christian monks setup a convent there. Sadly, but understandably, they too scraped the walls and added to the overall desecration.

Explore Deir el Bahri (Hatshepsut's Temple) in details:
Lower and Central Courts - Hatshepsut's Temple - Deir El Bahri - Part II
Punt Colonnade - Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Deir El Bahri) - Part III
Shrine of Hathor - Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Deir El Bahri) - Part IV
Birth Colonnade - Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Deir El Bahri) - Part V
Srnall and Upper Courts, Sanctuary - Hatshepsut Temple part VI

Egypt : Southern Buildings, Karnak Cachette, Seventh to Tenth Pylons - Karnak Complex part XI

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

The buildings extending southwards from the central court of the main temple of Karnak are mostly in ruin today. A brief survey will be made, however, to show the importance of the plan of reconstruction over the next ten years. A group of architects arc under contract with the Department of Antiquities for the complete reconstruction of the Karnak area, of which this is only one section, but perhaps the most important.
Proceeding from the central court (lying between the third and fourth pylons) are the remains of a court where there is a good view of Ramses II's famous treaty with the Hittites, followed by the seventh pylon. This court was the site of a temple of the Middle Kingdom and it was here that Legrain extracted a fantastic number of works of art from what became known as the Karnak Cachette. Buried in a pit were thousands of pieces including statues in stone and bronze, sphinxes and sacred animals. The bronze items alone numbered 17,000.  It seems that one of the Pharaohs decided to have a spring clean in the temple and remove all the junk. Though most of the pieces are of little artistic merit, the find shows that the temple could well have housed the 86,486 statues mentioned in the Great Harris Papyrus. The seventh pylon was built by Thutmose III, and facing it to the south are the remains of two colossal statues of him in red granite. Between the wall suniting the seventh and eighth pylons, to the east, is as mall shrine dating also from the reign of Thutmose III. The eighth pylon was the work of Queen Hatshepsut and is the most ancient part of the structure. In fact there is very little proof of her having built this pylon, for her name was removed from the reliefs by Thutmose II. And following Akhenaten's removal of all allusions to Amon, Seti I restored them, often inserting his own name in place of those of the older rulers. Reconstruction of this area may yet supply the missing clues to the overlapping reigns of the Thutmosides.
In the doorway at the rear left-hand of this court is an important historical relief on the left. It is the first instance in Egypt's long history where the high priest, in this case Amenhotep, is depicted in the same size as the Pharaoh. Standing with arms up lifted, Amenhotep offers flowers to Ramses IX. This relief indicates the growth of priestly power. Faithful traditionalists of the established religion, the priests of Amon had hitherto been righteous, just and devout. The power of leadership had been firmly vested in the throne and they had recognized and accepted this. Over the years however their simple piety had turned to mild interest in earthly matters, then acute interest, and finally to intrigue and a craving for political power. The high priest depicted in this mural makes offerings to the Pharaoh while being draped in linen by two servants. A reciprocal gesture of appreciation? Or a royal bribe?
Beyond the eighth pylon is a row of six royal personages. The best preserved are Amenhotep I (in limestone) and Thutmose II (inredgranite), both to the west. The ninth pylon was built by Harmhab the one-time general. When repairs started it was found to be filled, like its companion the tenth pylon, with blocks from Akhenaten's temple to the Sun. Together with the 40,000-odd blocks from this same period found beneath the hypostyle hall and the second pylon, these number some 60,000 blocks and are valuable clues to a period about which there are many gaps in our knowledge. When the first small,distinctively uniform sand stone blocks were discovered in the pylon of Ramses II, it was at first erroneously assumed that they had been brought lip-river from a dismantled temple in Tel eI Amarna, Drain age operations subsequently led to the excavation of parts of no less than seventeen colossal statues of Akhenaten himself. Akhenaten in fact had had the temple erected before he changed his capital to Tel eI Amarna and while Thebes was witnessing the slow indoctrination of a new religious concept.