As the centuries passed and all knowledge of hieroglyphic writing faded, Hatchepsut sank even deeper into obscurity. Her name was to be lost for almost two thousand years, during which time her monuments with their unreadable cartouches stood in mute testimony to their founder. Eventually, however, Djeser-Djeseru, now ruined and to a large extent buried under dunes of wind-blown sand and piles of rocks fallen from the cliff above, started to attract the attention of the western tourists who were becoming increasingly fascinated by Egypt's ancient past.26 By the middle of the eighteenth century, Deir el-Bahri had been proved to be a prolific source of mummies, papyri and other exotic oriental desirables, and trade in the stolen antiquities was both brisk and lucrative. A steady trickle of distinguished visitors now started to arrive at the site, and Djeser-Djeseru was recorded by the British cleric Richard Pococke (1737), by the Napoleonic Expedition (1798–1802) and by William Beechey and the ex-circus strongman turned antiquarian Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1817). With the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 came the first breakthrough in attempts to reconstruct the history of the temple. In 1828, the distinguished philologist and principal decoder of hieroglyphics, Jean François Champollion, paid a visit to Deir el-Bahri. Champollion was able to recognize the cartouche of Tuthmosis III, whom he called Moeris, and he realized that this king's cartouche usurped that of an earlier king whose partially erased name he misread as Amenenthe or Amonemhe.
Champollion firmly believed that his Amenenthe was a man. This caused him endless puzzlement as he noted that the name of the supposedly male king was consistently accompanied by feminine titles and forms. His words on this subject – fascinating to those of us blessed with hindsight – are worth quoting at length as they provide a good illustration of how a subconscious assumption or prejudice on the part of the excavator or translator may have a drastic effect on the interpretation of archaeological evidence:
If I felt somewhat surprised at seeing here, as elsewhere throughout the temple, the renowned Moeris, adorned with all the insignia of royalty, giving place to this Amenenthe, 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. Not only was there the prenomen of Amenenthe preceded by the title of sovereign ruler of the world, with the feminine affix, but also his own name immediately following on the title of ‘Daughter of the Sun’. Finally, in all the bas-reliefs representing the gods speaking to this king, he is addressed as a queen, as in the following formula: ‘Behold, thus saith Amen-Re, Lord of the Thrones of the World, to his daughter whom he loves, sun devoted to the truth: the building which thou hast made is like to the divine dwelling.’27
In order to explain this extraordinary situation, Champollion proposed the existence of an 18th Dynasty heiress-queen Amense, a sister of Tuthmosis II, who had first married a man named Tuthmosis and then, after his death, married the mysterious Amenenthe. Both these men ruled Egypt in Queen Amense's name. Following the death of Amense, Amenenthe retained his crown, becoming co-regent with the young Tuthmosis III, who turned out to be a somewhat ungrateful ward who was to spend much of his subsequent solo reign attempting to efface the name of his co-ruler from the walls of the Deir el-Bahri temple.
Niccolo Rosellini, Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Pisa and a close personal friend of Champollion, published a description of Djeser-Djeseru in 1844. Rosellini put forward a variant on Champollion's theme; his succession passed from Tuthmosis I to Tuthmosis II, then to his wife Queen Amoutmai, her sister Queen Amense, and finally to Tuthmosis III. At the same time John Gardiner Wilkinson, another distinguished linguist and the first to classify and number the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, took up residence on the West Bank of Thebes where he had plenty of time to read the hieroglyphs for himself. Wilkinson tentatively suggested that the mysterious king should be re-named Amenneitgori or Amun-Noo-Het and should be re-classified not as a man but as a woman ‘not in the list; a queen?’28 It was left to Karl Richard Lepsius, leader of the Prussian expedition of 1842–5, to make some sense of the muddle by confirming that the clue to the king's identity was not to be found in her appearance, which as all agreed was entirely masculine, but in her inscriptions:
In the outermost angle of this rock-cove [Deir el-Bahri, called el-Asasif by Lepsius] is situated the most ancient temple-building of Western Thebes, which belongs to the period of the New Egyptian Monarchy, at the commencement of its glory… It was queen Numt-Amen, the elder sister of Tuthmosis III, who accomplished this bold plan… She never appears on her monuments as a woman, but in male attire; we only find out her sex by the inscriptions. No doubt at that period it was illegal for a woman to govern; for that reason, also, her brother, probably still a minor, appears at a later period as ruler along with her. After her death her Shields [cartouches] were everywhere converted into Tuthmosis Shields, the feminine forms of speech in the inscription were changed, and her names were never adopted in the later lists along with the legitimate kings.29
Lepsius was the first to publish the name of ‘Hat… u Numt-Amen’ although he assigned her to the 17th Dynasty.
However, the situation was still far from clear, and Samuel Sharpe, writing in 1859 and relying on secondary sources including Manetho, Herodotus and Eratosthenes for his information, was fairly typical of many of his fellow authors in his confusion. He knew of the existence of the female Egyptian king, and he even knew many of the salient facts of her reign, but he had her dates and even her name hopelessly jumbled:
… Tuthmosis II followed the first of that name on the throne of Thebes; but he is very much thrown into the shade by Amun-Nitocris, his strong-minded and ambitious wife. She was the last of the race of Memphite sovereigns, the twelfth or eleventh in succession from the builders of the great pyramids; and by her marriage with Tuthmosis, Upper and Lower Egypt were brought under one sceptre. She was handsome among women, and brave among men, and she governed the kingdom for her brother with great splendour… Tuthmosis III, on coming to the throne was a minor: queen Nitocris, who had before governed for her husband, now governed for his successor, and even when the young Tuthmosis came of age, he was hardly king of the whole country till after the death of Nitocris… in her sculptures she is always dressed in men's clothes to indicate that she was a queen in her own right, and not a queen consort…30
Sharpe correctly credits Hatchepsut with building works at Karnak, the erection of a pair of obelisks and the construction of the Deir el-Bahri temple, but he also believed that she had built the third pyramid at Giza, misreading her name Maatkare and confusing her with both King Menkaure of the 4th Dynasty and Queen Menkare-Nitocris, the 6th Dynasty female ruler of Egypt whose story has become entangled with a host of myths and legends and whose beautiful naked ghost – this time confused with the fictional courtesan and queen, Rhodolphis – is said to haunt the pyramids.
A mere twenty-five years later, with a greater understanding of the hieroglyphic language, much of the confusion had been cleared away. Hatchepsut's name, titles and principal monuments were now known, and she even had her own entry in a dictionary of Egyptian archaeology published in 1875:
Hatsou… queen of the 18th Dynasty. Her prenomen is Ra-ma-ka [Maatkare read backwards]. Her father, Thouthmes I, proclaimed her queen in preference to her two brothers, who reigned later under the names of Thouthmes II and Thouthmes III. However she shared power with Thouthmes II, who died a short time after. Again Hatchepsut reigned alone… Next she associated herself with her second brother Thouthmes III, and it was not until the fifteenth year of his reign that she eventually decided to give up the throne. She is represented on the monuments as a king, with a bearded face.31
From this time on it was the work of the archaeologists patiently excavating in and around Luxor and on the West Bank at Thebes which was
to add factual flesh to the bare bones of Hatchepsut's history. Mariette, Naville, Carter, Winlock, Lancing, Hayes and the Polish Mission, to name but a few, have all made substantial contributions to our increasing understanding of her unusual reign, an understanding which is, through necessity, based almost entirely on Hatchepsut's own surviving monuments and monumental inscriptions – her own propaganda in stone. Hatchepsut had always intended that her monuments should be read as eternal testimonies to her own grandeur. It is perhaps only fitting that they should now, some three thousand years after their conception, start to slowly reveal the story of her rule as the king herself wished it to be told. Hatchepsut's mummified body may be lost to us but her name, temporarily forgotten but now forever linked with the beautiful Djeser-Djeseru, is once again spoken in Egypt.
Historical Events
Years Before Christ
LOCAL CHRONOLOGY
EGYPT
3000
Archaic Period (Dynasties 1–2)
Unification of Egypt
2500
Old Kingdom (Dynasties 3–6)
Djoser step-pyramid at Sakkara
Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza
2000
First Intermediate Period (Dynasties 7–11)
Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11–13)
Theban kings re-unify Egypt
Queen Sobeknofru
1500
Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 14–17)
Hyksos kings in Northern Egypt
New Kingdom (Dynasties 18–20)
Hatchepsut
Tutankhamen
Ramesses II
Queen Twosret
1000
Third Intermediate Period (Dynasties 21–25)
Kings at Tanis
Nubian kings
500
Late Period (Dynasties 26–31)
Ptolemaic Period
Egypt part of Roman Empire
1. The Temple of Amen at Karnak.
2. The Valley of the Kings.
3. Hatchepsut as king offering before the barque of Amen.
4. The God Amen.
5. Seated statue of Hatchepsut from Djeser-Djeseru showing the king with a female body and male accessories.
6. The near-identical figures for King Hatchepsut and King Tuthmosis III, Hatchepsut in front.
7. Scene showing the gods crowning King Hatchepsut, which had been attacked in antiquity.
8. Head of Hatchepsut.
9. Granite statue of Hatchepsut.
10. Red granite sphinx of Hatchepsut.
11. The standing obelisk of Hatchepsut at the heart of the Temple of Amen, Karnak.
12. a and b. (above and below) Djeser-Djeseru.
13. Senenmut and the Princess Neferure.
14. Senenmut and Neferure.
15. Osiride head of Hatchepsut.
16. The carefully erased image of Hatchepsut.
17. Tuthmosis III.
Notes
Introduction
1 Extract from the Speos Artemidos inscription of King Hatchepsut, translation given by Gardiner, A. (1946), The Great Speos Artemidos Inscription, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 32: 43–56.
2 Budge, E. A. W. (1902), Egypt and Her Asiatic Empire, London: 1.
3 Naville, E. (1894), The Temple of Deir el-Bahari: its plan, its founders and its first explorers: Introductory Memoir, 12th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund, London: 15.
4 Budge, E. A. W. (1902), Egypt and Her Asiatic Empire, London: 4.
5 Naville, E. (1906), Queen Hatshopsitu, her life and Monuments, in T. M. Davis (ed.), The Tomb of Hatshopsitu, London: 1.
6 Gardiner, A. (1961), Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford: 184.
7 Hayes, W. C. (1973), Egypt: Internal Affairs from Tuthmosis I to the Death of Amenophis III, in I. E. S. Edwards et al., (eds), Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edition, Cambridge, 2.1: 317.
8 Drioton, E. and Vandier, J. (1938), L'Egypte: Les Peuples de l'orient méditer-ranéen II, Paris: 398.
9 O'Connor, D. (1983), in Trigger, B. G. et al., (eds), Ancient Egypt: a social history, Cambridge: 196. The abstract concept of maat was personified in the form of an anthropoid goddess, the daughter of the sun god, Re. This lady was always depicted as a slender young woman wearing a single tall ostrich feather tied on her head by a hair-band.
10 Consult Lichtheim, M. (1973), Ancient Egyptian Literature I: the Old and Middle Kingdoms, Los Angeles: 149–63, for a full translation and discussion of this text.
11 Naville, E. (1894), The Temple of Deir el-Bahari: its plan, its founders and its first explorers: Introductory Memoir, 12th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund, London: 9.
Chapter 1 Egypt in the Early Eighteenth Dynasty
1 Extract from the Speos Artemidos inscription of King Hatchepsut, translation given by Gardiner, A. (1946), The Great Speos Artemidos Inscription, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 32:47–8.
2 In a tradition which started during the Old Kingdom, many Egyptian men of rank made permanent records of their achievements in the form of stylized autobiographies which were preserved on the walls of their tombs.
3 For these, and many other Middle Kingdom texts in translation, plus a discussion of the development of Old and Middle Kingdom literature, consult Lichtheim, M. (1973), Ancient Egyptian Literature I: the Old and Middle Kingdoms, Los Angeles. See also Parkinson, R. B. (1991), Voices from Ancient Egypt: an anthology of Middle Kingdom writings, London.
4 Quoted in Gardiner, A. (1961), Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford: 155. Josephus claims to be quoting directly from Manetho himself. His explanation of the name ‘Hyksos’ is now known to be incorrect; Hyksos is actually the corrupted Greek version of an Egyptian phrase meaning ‘The Chiefs of Foreign Lands’. We have no knowledge of the precise origins of the Hyksos peoples.
5 The 13th Dynasty Brooklyn Papyrus 35.1446 gives some indication of the numbers of these migrants when it records that 45 out of a total of 79 recorded domestic servants were ‘Asiatic’ in origin.
6 As the dynasties represent lines of ruling families or related individuals rather than successive chronological periods it was possible for Egypt, at times of disunity, to be ruled by two or more dynasties at the same time. Thus, the 14th Dynasty appears to have been contemporary with the 13th Dynasty, and Dynasties 15, 16 and 17 were also contemporary, each dynasty ruling over its own, exclusive, territory.
7 Gardiner, A. (1961), Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford: 167–8.
8 Gardiner, A. (1961), Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford: 155–6.
9 Extract from The Quarrel of Apophis and Seknenre, translated in Simpson, W. K., ed. (1973), The Literature of Ancient Egypt: an anthology of stories, instructions and poetry, New Haven: 77–80.
10 Smith, G. E. (1912), The Royal Mummies, Cairo.
11 Gardiner, A. (1961), Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford: 167.
12 For a full discussion of this stela, see Habachi, L. (1972), The Second Stela of Kamose and his Struggle against the Hyksos Ruler and his Capital, Gluckstadt.
13 All extracts from the autobiography of Ahmose, son of Ibana, are translated by S. R. Snape. For a published translation of this work, consult Lichtheim, M. (1976), Ancient Egyptian Literature II: the New Kingdom, Los Angeles: 12–15.
14 For a basic description of Egyptian army life, consult Shaw, I. (1991), Egyptian Warfare and Weapons, Risborough. Shaw provides a more specialized reading list.
15 Extract from the obelisk inscription of King Hatchepsut, Karnak.
16 Wosret was a relatively obscure Upper Egyptian goddess.
17 Homer, Iliad, Book IX. Homer refers to the Egyptian Thebes as ‘hundred-gated’ to distinguish it from the Greek ‘seven-gated’ city of Thebes.
18 Keen, M. (1990), English Society in the Middle Ages 1348–1500, London: 161. Keen cites as an example the household of Earl Gilbert of Clare who moved on average every two to three weeks.
19 The English Queen Elizabeth I undertook similar tours of her country as a deliberate cost-cutting exe
rcise, staying with local dignitaries in order to save the expense of maintaining a permanent court in London. A visit from the queen and her entourage could prove to be a ruinously expensive honour for a loyal subject.
20 Quoted in Kitchen, K. (1982), Pharaoh Triumphant: the life and times of Ramesses II, Warminster: 122.
Hatchepsut Page 27
