Hatchepsut

by Joyce Tyldesley

  The once popular image of the queen as a scheming and power-hungry woman owes more to the now-discredited theory of the feuding Tuthmosides than to concrete historical evidence. All that we know of her previous life, first as queen consort and then as queen regent, shows Hatchepsut to have been an unexceptional and indeed almost boringly conformist wife and mother paying due honour to both her husband and her stepson, loving her young daughter and contenting herself with the traditional role allotted to royal women. Although abnormal behaviour in a royal princess is unlikely to have been recorded for posterity, it is equally unlikely that an obviously egocentric megalomaniac would have been allowed to rise to the dizzy heights of consort, God's Wife and regent. Tuthmosis II was not compelled by either law or tradition to accept his sister as his chief wife and, even though Hatchepsut was a princess of the royal blood, a speedy banishment to the security of the harem-palace would have left Tuthmosis free to select a more amenable queen and a more suitable guardian for his infant son.

  Hatchepsut's subsequent lengthy reign, characterized by its economic prosperity, monumental building and foreign exploration, seems to confirm her competence and mental stability. This was not, as far as we can tell some three and a half thousand years later, the rule of a semi-deranged obsessive but a carefully calculated period of political manoeuvring which allowed an unconventional pharaoh to become accepted on the throne and which brought peace and prosperity to her people. In all ways bar one, it was a conventional and successful New Kingdom reign. But, if the image of Hatchepsut as a woman motivated purely by ambition and greed is to be toned down or even entirely discarded, what possible explanation could there be for her usurpation of power? And what made her action acceptable to the Egyptian élite? Was there some unrecorded crisis which demanded a swift response and the establishment of a strong pharaoh on the throne? A sudden threat to the security of the immediate royal family, such as an insurrection in the royal harem, might well have prompted Hatchepsut to take drastic action to safeguard her stepson's position.16 In any such emergency Hatchepsut would have been a natural choice as co-regent as she, already regent and ‘only’ a woman, would not necessarily have been perceived as posing the threat to the authority of the true king.

  Hatchepsut's treatment of the young Tuthmosis III indicates that she never regarded his existence as a serious problem even though, as an intelligent woman, she must have realized that every passing year would strengthen his claim to rule alone. She never attempted to establish a solo reign and, instead of hiding the boy-king away or even having him killed, she was careful to accord him all the respect due to a fellow monarch. Indeed, Tuthmosis was even encouraged to spend part of his youth training with the army, the now traditional education of the crown prince but possibly a dangerous decision for one in Hatchepsut's increasingly vulnerable position, as the support of those who controlled the New Kingdom army was vital to the survival of the pharaoh. Although he was represented less often than Hatchepsut, and although he was undoubtedly the junior partner in the co-regency, ‘leading as shadowy an existence as a Japanese Mikado under the Shogunate’,17 Tuthmosis never entirely disappeared from view. He even had a few monuments of his own, although these are almost invariably to be found outside Egypt's borders, either in Nubia or Sinai. Within Egypt, Hatchepsut was careful never to appear subordinate to Tuthmosis; her image or her cartouche preceded that of her co-ruler on all but one of their shared monuments, and even the private monuments of the time recognized that Hatchepsut was the dominant king:

  ... by the favour of the Good Goddess, Mistress of the Two Lands [Maatkare], may she live and endure forever like Re – and of her brother, the Good God, master of the ritual Menkheperre [Tuthmosis III] given life like Re forever.18

  A consideration of the character and behaviour of Tuthmosis himself must play an important part in any analysis of Hatchepsut's actions. If we ignore speculation and stick to known facts we see that, whatever his private thoughts, Tuthmosis publicly accepted his aunt as co-regent. Initially, as an infant with a politically insignificant mother and no influential male relations, he can have had little choice in the matter. However, he would have been of an age to challenge Hatchepsut for at least five years prior to her death, and his training in the army would have made a successful military coup a virtual certainty. Reigning alone, Tuthmosis was to prove himself one of the most able warrior-pharaohs that Egypt has ever experienced. It is almost impossible to equate the hero of no fewer than seventeen aggressive Asian campaigns with the image of the impotent wimp who resented his co-regent for twenty years but who was never able to assert his right to rule. Similarly, it is difficult to envisage the two co-rulers remaining locked in deadly enmity for almost a quarter of a century; surely one or other would have taken steps to remove their rival? It has been argued that Hatchepsut felt unable to dispose of Tuthmosis as he was her passport to the kingship although, if she was so secure in her rule that Tuthmosis was unable to challenge her position, it is unlikely that his death would have dislodged her. There is certainly no obvious reason why Tuthmosis should not have attempted discreetly to remove Hatchepsut.19

  Yet, as far as we are aware, Tuthmosis made no such challenge to his stepmother's authority. He seems to have been content to allow the situation to take its course and, again lacking any evidence to the contrary, we must assume that he was relatively happy to accept the co-regency. Perhaps, having grown up under Hatchepsut's guidance, he could not easily envisage removing her from power. Indeed, as we have already seen, it is even possible that Tuthmosis did not regard his own right to the throne as automatic. His need to cite an oracle of Amen in support of his kingship is certainly unusual; the true king generally had no need of such obvious divine support. In any case, Tuthmosis must have realized that the situation could not last indefinitely. All previous co-regencies had ended peacefully, not with an abdication but with a death. Tuthmosis himself, accustomed to the tradition of the co-regency and with no particular political axe to grind, may have found his position easier to accept than the modern observers who today grow angry and indignant on his behalf.

  If Tuthmosis was unable or unwilling to take action against his aunt during her lifetime, how did he treat her when she was dead? We know that, following Hatchepsut's death, somebody masterminded a determined attempt to delete the memory of the female pharaoh from the Egyptian historical record. To this end her monuments were desecrated and her name and images were erased, variously being replaced by the name or image of Tuthmosis I, II or III. Initially these attacks were regarded as firm proof of a personal vendetta on the part of Tuthmosis III, and it was assumed that the new king – overcome by his long-suppressed hatred against the usurper who had denied him his rights for so long – must have ordered his henchmen to take action against Hatchepsut's monuments at the very beginning of his solo rule. However, new evidence has started to indicate that the proscription of Hatchepsut's memory did not occur until the very end of Tuthmosis' reign, or perhaps even later in the New Kingdom. This makes it less easy to attribute the attacks to personal spite; if Tuthmosis was really filled with such an uncontrollable hatred, why wait for over twenty years to act? Instead of impulsive actions they start to look like well-calculated political moves, and it would seem that it is no longer safe to cite the attacks on Hatchepsut's memory as proof of Tuthmosis' hatred of his aunt.20

  The vast majority of the Egyptian people, the peasants and lower classes, would have been ignorant of any struggle for power within the palace. As long as there was a pharaoh on the throne, and as long as the state continued to function correctly (that is, paying out rations), the people remained remarkably content with their lot. However, no pharaoh could hope to rule without the support of the relatively small circle of male élite who headed the army, the civil service and the priesthood. These were the men who effectively controlled the country and kept the king in power. Again, we must assume that these influential men found their new monarch acceptable even if they did not positiv
ely welcome a woman at the helm. Why was she so acceptable? Was her assumption of power so gradual that it went unnoticed until it was too late to act, or was there no one else more suitable? Perhaps Gibbon has provided us with the best explanation for this uncharacteristic departure from years of tradition when he observes that:

  In every age and every country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes has usurped the powers of the State, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies, however… the gallant spirit of chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a singular exception; and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute sovereign of a great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of exercising the smallest employment, civil or military.21

  Hatchepsut, the singular exception, had inherited a cabinet of tried and trusted advisers from her brother, many of whom had previously worked under her father and all of whom seem to have been happy to switch their allegiance to the new regime. The two old faithfuls Ahmose-Pennekheb and Ineni were still serving the crown, and Ineni in particular seems to have been especially favoured by the new king:

  Her Majesty praised me and loved me. She recognised my worth at court, she presented me with things, she magnified me, she filled my house with silver and gold, with all beautiful stuffs of the royal house… I increased beyond everything.22

  Although Ineni was obviously deeply impressed by Hatchepsut's rule, indeed so impressed that he failed to record the name of the ‘real king’, Tuthmosis III, in his tomb, he never specifically refers to his mistress by her regal name of Maatkare, and it would appear that he died just before she reached the height of her powers. In contrast, Ahmose-Pennekheb omits Hatchepsut from the list of kings whom he has served and offers an unusual combination of her queenly and kingly titles: ‘the God's Wife repeated favours for me, the Great King's Wife Maatkare, Justified’, which would indicate that his autobiography too might have been composed at a time when there was some confusion over Hatchepsut's official title.

  Gradually, as her reign progressed, Hatchepsut started to appoint new advisers, many of whom were men of relatively humble birth such as Senenmut, steward of the queen and tutor to Neferure. By selecting officials with a personal loyalty to herself, Hatchepsut was able to ensure that she was surrounded by the most devoted of courtiers; those whose careers were inextricably linked to her own. However, by no means all the new appointees were self-made men and some, like Hapuseneb, High Priest of Amen and builder of the royal tomb, already had close links with the royal family. Hapuseneb may have actually been a distant relation of Hatchepsut; we know that his grandfather Imhotep had been vizier to Tuthmosis I. Other important characters at Hatchepsut's court included Chancellor Neshi, leader of the expedition to Punt, the Treasurer Tuthmosis, Useramen the Vizier, Amenhotep the Chief Steward and Inebni, who replaced Seni as Viceroy of Kush. After Hatchepsut's death, some of her most effective courtiers continued to work for Tuthmosis III, and there is no sign that they suffered in any way from having been linked with the previous regime.

  From the day that Hatchepsut acceded to the throne, she started to use the five ‘Great Names’ which comprised the full titulary of a king of Egypt and which reflected some of the divine attributes of kingship. To the ancient Egyptians each of these names had its own significance. The Horus name represented the king as the earthly embodiment of Horus; the Two Ladies or nebty name indicated the special relationship between the king and the goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt; the golden Horus name had a somewhat obscure origin and meaning; the prenomen, which always followed the title ‘he who belongs to the sedge and the bee’ (generally translated as ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt’), was the first name to be enclosed within a cartouche; the nomen, also written within a cartouche and preceded by the epithet ‘Son of Re’, was usually the personal name of the king before he or she acceded to the throne. The prenomen was always the more important name, and this was either used by itself, or with the nomen. Thus we often find contemporary texts referring to the new king simply as Maatkare (maat is the Ka of Re), although her full title was Horus ‘Powerful-of-Kas’, Two Ladies ‘Flourishing-of-Years’, Female Horus of Fine Gold ‘Divine-of-Diadems’, King of Upper and Lower Egypt ‘Maatkare’, Daughter of Re, ‘Khenmet-Amen Hatchepsut’. Similarly Tuthmosis III, often accorded only his prenomen of Menkheperre (The Being of Re is Established), was more properly named Horus ‘Strong-bull-arising-in-Thebes’, Two Ladies ‘Enduring-of-kingship-like-Re-in-Heaven’, Golden Horus ‘Powerful-of-strength, holy-of-diadems’, King of Upper and Lower Egypt ‘Menkheperre’, Son of Re ‘Tuthmosis Beautiful-of-Forms’.

  Throughout her reign, Hatchepsut sought to honour her earthly father, Tuthmosis I, in every way possible, while virtually ignoring the existence of her dead husband–brother, Tuthmosis II. It is not particularly unusual to find that a young girl brought up in a female-dominated environment feels a strong desire to emulate and impress her absent father, particularly when he is acknowledged to be the most powerful and glamorous man in the land. However, to some observers this hero-worship went far beyond the natural affection that a young woman might be expected to feel for her dead father:

  This [devotion to a dominant father] is a trait which prominent females sometimes show. Anna Freud turned herself into Sigmund's intellectual heir, Benazir Bhutto makes a political platform out of her father's memory, and one is reminded of a recent British prime minister whose entry in Who's Who included a father but no mother. Did Tuthmosis I ever call his daughter ‘the best man in the dynasty’, and is this why Hatchepsut shows no identification with other women?23

  Perhaps the most important point here is that all these women lacked an acceptable female role-model and therefore, once they had made the decision to commit themselves to a career in the public eye, had little choice but to follow their fathers rather than their mothers, sisters, cousins or aunts into what had become the family business. Hatchepsut, as king, had no other woman to identify with. She had already spent at least fifteen years emulating her mother as queen and now wanted to advance to king. Of all the women named above, Mrs Bhutto, a lady who is not afraid to use the name and reputation of her father to enhance her own cause, is perhaps the closest parallel to Hatchepsut. More telling might be a comparison with Queen Elizabeth I of England, a woman who inherited her throne against all odds at a time of dynastic difficulty when the royal family was suffering from a shortage of sons, and who deliberately stressed her relationship with her vigorous and effective father in order to lessen the effect of her own femininity and make her own reign more acceptable to her people: ‘And though I be a woman, yet I have as good a courage, answerable to my place, as ever my father had.’

  Citing Tuthmosis as the inspiration for Hatchepsut's actions is, however, in many ways putting the chariot before the horse. Tuthmosis I was Hatchepsut's reason to rule, not her motivation, as Egyptian tradition decreed that son should follow father on the throne. Given Hatchepsut's unusual circumstances, she needed to stress her links with her father more than most other kings. Therefore, in order to establish herself as her father's heir – and thereby justify her claim to the throne – Hatchepsut was forced to edit her own past so that her husband-brother, also a child of Tuthmosis I, disappeared from the scene and she became the sole Horus to her father's Osiris. To this end she redesigned her father's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, emulated his habit of erecting obelisks, built him a new mortuary chapel associated with her own at Deir el-Bahri and allowed him prominence on many of her inscriptions.

  Nor was Hatchepsut the only 18th Dynasty monarch to revere the memory of Tuthmosis I; Tuthmosis III also sought to link himself with the grandfather whom he almost certainly never met while virtually ignoring the existence of his own less impressive father. As a sign of respect Tuthmosis III, somewhat confusingly, occasionally refers to himself as the son rather than grandson of Tuthmosis I. Fortunately, the autobiography of Ineni specifically tells us
that Tuthmosis II was succeeded by ‘the son he had begotten’, removing any doubt as to the actual paternity of Tuthmosis III. The terms ‘father’ and ‘son’ need not be taken literally in these circumstances; ‘father’ was often used by the ancient Egyptians as a respectful form of address for a variety of older men and could therefore be used in a reference to an adoptive father or stepfather, patron or even ancestor. That Tuthmosis I should be regarded as an heroic figure by his descendants is not too surprising. Not only had he proved himself a highly successful monarch, he was also the founder of the immediate royal family. His predecessor Amenhotep I, although officially classified as belonging to the same dynasty, was in fact no blood relation of either Hatchepsut or Tuthmosis III.

  As a king of Egypt, Hatchepsut was entitled to a suitably splendid monarch's tomb. Therefore, soon after her accession, work on the rather understated tomb in the Wadi Sikkat Taka ez-Zeida ceased and the excavation of a far more regal monument commenced in the Valley of the Kings. Following recent 18th Dynasty tradition, this tomb was to have two distinct components: a burial chamber hidden away in the Valley (now known as Tomb KV20) and a highly visible mortuary temple, in this case Djeser-Djeseru or ‘Holy of the Holies’, a magnificent temple nestling in a natural bay in the Theban mountain at Deir el-Bahri.24 Two architects were appointed to oversee the essentially separate building projects, and Hapuseneb was placed in charge of work at KV20 while Senenmut is generally credited with the work at Deir el-Bahri. However, it is possible that the two elements of the tomb were originally intended to be linked via hidden underground passages, and