Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley

by Daughters of Isis- Women of Ancient Egypt (epub)

  Herodotus, for once more down-to-earth than Strabo, was scornful of those ignorant enough to believe that a woman of Rhodophis’ alleged profession could ever become rich enough to build herself a pyramid, but rather wistfully reflected that ‘Naukratis seems somehow to be the place where such women are most attractive.’ Of Queen Nitocris he wrote:

  After Menes there came 330 kings whose names the priests recited to me from a papyrus roll. Included in these generations were eighteen Ethiopian kings and one queen, a native of the country; the rest were all Egyptian men. The name of the queen was the same as that of the Babylonian princess Nitocris.

  He then recounted the tradition of the tragic and dramatic death of the queen, which may be summarized as follows:

  Nitocris was the beautiful and virtuous wife and sister of King Metesouphis II, an Old Kingdom monarch who had ascended to the throne at the end of the 6th Dynasty but who had been savagely murdered by his subjects soon afterwards. Nitocris then became the sole ruler of Egypt and determined to avenge the death of her beloved husband-brother. She gave orders for the secret construction of a huge underground hall connected to the River Nile by a hidden channel. When this chamber was complete she threw a splendid inaugural banquet, inviting as guests all those whom she held personally responsible for the death of the king. While the unsuspecting guests were feasting she commanded that the secret conduit be opened and, as the Nile waters flooded in, all the traitors were drowned. In order to escape the vengeance of the Egyptian people she then committed suicide by throwing herself ‘into a great chamber filled with hot ashes’ and suffocating.

  Queen Sobeknofru – 12th Dynasty

  The life of the next Egyptian queen regnant, Sobeknofru, is far better documented than that of Nitocris, but there are still unfortunately large gaps in our knowledge of her reign. We know that Sobeknofru held power briefly as the last ruler of the 12th Dynasty, ascending to the throne in approximately 1789 BC

  Fig. 33 Cartouche of Queen Sobeknofru

  and ruling, according to the Turin Canon, for a period of precisely three years, ten months and twenty-four days. The 12th Dynasty had been a period of over two hundred years of Egyptian peace and stability, presided over by one of the longest continuous royal lines ever to rule Egypt. However, Sobeknofru’s short reign occurred in a far less secure political climate; the succeeding confused and badly documented 13th Dynasty heralded the end of the Middle Kingdom and a rapid decline into the disorder of the Second Intermediate Period.

  We are told by Manetho that Sobeknofru was a royal princess, the sister of her predecessor, King Amenemhat IV. This suggests that she was the daughter of the previous king, Amenemhat III, and indeed a stone block recovered from his pyramid at Hawara specifically mentions this fact. It is not clear whether as a royal princess she was married to her brother the king: a ‘Queen Tanefru’, also a daughter of Amenemhat III, whose name appears in regal cartouches and who bears the title ‘King’s Wife’, was possibly the consort of Amenemhat IV but, as the two names are very similar, it may be that they belong to the same woman, or perhaps to royal sisters. Although blocks have been recovered engraved with the names of both Sobeknofru and her father it is unlikely that these two monarchs ever shared a co-regency. Nor was Sobeknofru ever a co-regent of Amenemhat IV, who had himself been a co-regent of Amenemhat III and who had enjoyed a brief and unremarkable solo reign after his father’s death.

  The reasons behind Sobeknofru’s ascent to the throne are now lost to us. There have been suggestions of a dramatic feud within the Royal family, with Sobeknofru plotting successfully to wrest power away from her male relations. However, it would be far more realistic to assume that there was no more suitable male claimant to the throne, and that Sobeknofru was required to become king in an attempt to continue her dying royal line. There are certainly no indications that her role as pharaoh was resented, and she has never been regarded by later historians as a usurping or scheming woman as were both Hatchepsut and Twosret. Indeed, Sobeknofru seems to have been perfectly acceptable as a female ruler, and is recorded as a female monarch in the major king lists. A number of statues of the queen, recovered from Tell Daba in the Nile Delta, clearly show her as a lady dressed in woman’s clothing and, again unlike Hatchepsut, she appears to have made no effort to be portrayed symbolically as a man. The end of Sobeknofru’s reign is obscure, although it is generally assumed that she died a natural death while in office. It is possible that she owned one of the two badly ruined pyramids at the site of Mazghuna, not far from the other 12th Dynasty pyramids.

  Queen Hatchepsut – 18th Dynasty

  Fig. 34 Cartouche of Queen Hatchepsut

  Amen, Lord of Thrones of the Two Lands caused me to rule the Red Land and the Black Land as a reward. No one rebels against me in all my lands… I am his daughter in very truth, she who serves him and knows what he ordains. My reward from my father is life-stability-dominion on the Horus-throne of all the living, like Re forever.

  Obelisk inscription of Queen Hatchepsut

  Princess Hatchepsut, the eldest daughter of King Tuthmosis I and his consort, Queen Ahmose, was born into a time of unprecedented Egyptian wealth and prosperity. Unfortunately, this was also a time when the royal family was being plagued by a shortage of sons. Tuthmosis I was not himself of royal birth and his mother, the Lady Senseneb, was always known by the simple descriptive title of ‘King’s Mother’. He had achieved his dramatic rise to power by becoming a general in the army of his immediate predecessor, Amenhotep I. Amenhotep, impressed by his soldier’s obvious abilities and lacking any more suitable heir, selected him to become the next pharaoh. To add strength to Tuthmosis’ position he married him to his daughter, Ahmose, and announced a formal co-regency with his new son-in-law. In due course of time, Tuthmosis became the sole ruler of Egypt.

  Sadly, the sons of Tuthmosis and Ahmose all died in infancy and, like Amenhotep before him, Tuthmosis I was forced to look outside the immediate royal family for a successor. He chose a young man also named Tuthmosis, his natural son by a concubine named Mutnofret, and married him to his daughter Hatchepsut, thereby reinforcing his son’s right to inherit the throne. Mutnofret may herself have had royal blood in her veins as she was possibly the daughter of Amenhotep I and therefore either the full or half-sister of Queen Ahmose. Much later Hatchepsut was to distort the sequence of these events, claiming that Tuthmosis I had actually associated himself in a co-regency with his daughter with the intention that she should eventually become king. It seems highly unlikely that this was ever the case, particularly as contemporary monuments show that Hatchepsut continued to receive only the lesser titles of princess and queen-consort after her father’s death. Her public announcement of the co-rule was apparently an attempt to explain and reinforce her hold on the throne; indeed, her reign is characterized by her constant need to justify her actions both to her people and for posterity.

  Tuthmosis II followed his father to the throne and, as his consort, Hatchepsut became queen. She appears to have behaved in a modest and totally conventional manner throughout the new king’s short reign, accepting the standard titles of ‘King’s Daughter, King’s Sister, God’s Wife and King’s Great Wife’ and allowing herself to be portrayed lending wifely support to her husband. She even started to build herself a suitably discreet consort’s tomb in an out-of-the-way area to the south of Deir el-Bahri on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes. Hatchepsut was clearly a dutiful wife, and bore her half-brother two daughters, Neferure and Meritre-Hatchepsut, although she had no son. Once again there was no legitimate male heir to the throne and, like his father before him, Tuthmosis II was forced to turn to the son of a concubine for his successor. Isis, the mother of Tuthmosis III, was later described by her son as ‘King’s Great Wife, Mistress of South and North, Great Heiress, God’s Wife and King’s Mother’ but there is no evidence that she was ever a principal wife of equal status with Hatchepsut.

  Having ascended into heaven Tuthmosis II became united with the
gods. His son, having succeeded in his place as king of the Two Lands, ruled upon the throne of his father while his sister, the God’s Wife Hatchepsut, governed Egypt and the Two Lands were under her control. People worked for her, and Egypt bowed her head.

  Recorded by the government official Ineni

  The young Tuthmosis III succeeded to his father’s throne under the direct supervision of his stepmother and aunt, the formidable Dowager Queen Hatchepsut. He does not appear to have felt the need to consolidate his position by marrying either of the two royal princesses, and it would appear that his right to rule was widely recognized. Hatchepsut herself accepted the

  accession of her young stepson, and throughout the first year of the new regime she was content to remain the dutiful and inconspicuous ‘God’s Wife and Great Royal Wife’. However, towards the end of his second regnal year she was starting to develop a higher profile; by his seventh year she had acquired definite power, had announced herself co-regent and had been crowned as a king of Egypt. The construction of her massive mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri and the building of a more suitably regal tomb started at about this date. From this period onwards Hatchepsut is uniquely depicted both as a conventional woman and, in an attempt to symbolically emphasize her kingly role, as a man wearing men’s clothing and accessories down to the artificial beard: her royal title, however, almost always has the feminine ending attached and there is no suggestion that she ever actually dressed up as a man. There is no confusion over Hatchepsut’s sexuality as there is over the heretic King Akhenaten, and no suggestion that she was either a lesbian or a transvestite.

  We have no idea what suddenly caused Hatchepsut to defy convention and proclaim herself a king, and speculation on this subject has been rife. Was it simple greed, or a lust for power on the part of the queen? Was she unwilling to accept that as the daughter, sister and wife of a king she could be passed over in favour of her stepson? Was there some unrecorded national emergency, or was the young Tuthmosis III initially too weak to rule alone? Did Tuthmosis hate his stepmother, or welcome her help? The fact that Hatchepsut was content to share her kingship, however nominally, with her stepson, and the indications that Tuthmosis accepted this co-regency even when he had reached an age to rule alone, hint that the whole situation was far more complex than is often supposed. The conventional explanation, that Hatchepsut was a woman hungry for power, is certainly unconvincing. If this was the case why wait so long to seize power? And how did she manage to attract the steady support which she undoubtedly received? It is certainly one of the greatest puzzles of Egyptian history that the rightful king, Tuthmosis,

  Fig. 35 Hatchepsut as a man

  who might have been expected to react angrily and decisively to Hatchepsut’s unprecedented activities, seems to have accepted the new situation, appearing content to remain in the background and ruling alone only after his stepmother’s death. Two major but opposing views may be suggested to explain this conundrum, but the truth almost certainly lies somewhere between these two extremes.

  The conventional and most widely held belief is that Tuthmosis did not like the situation but was incapable of doing anything about it. As he came to the throne as a young and inexperienced boy he may well have needed the support and advice provided by the queen; by the time he grew old enough to resent his loss of authority the reins of power were firmly gathered in Hatchepsut’s obviously capable hands. If Hatchepsut controlled the treasury and had the full support of the civil service Tuthmosis would have been powerless against her. The desecration of Hatchepsut’s monuments after her death has often been taken as indirect proof of Tuthmosis’ hatred of his co-regent. However, archaeological evidence indicates that this defacement may not have occurred until at least twenty years after Hatchepsut’s death, a long time for Tuthmosis to hold his grudge before taking action.

  The second explanation is that Tuthmosis did not feel that he had any grounds for complaint against his stepmother. He may even have actively welcomed Hatchepsut’s guidance at a time when he was too young to rule alone effectively, and may have preferred to show his gratitude by waiting for her death rather than demoting her when he came of age. After all, although there were well-established precedents for co-regencies these invariably ended with the death of one of the partners, not with an abdication, and Tuthmosis could have reasonably expected to outlive his aunt and then enjoy a solo reign. Hatchepsut clearly made no attempt to depose Tuthmosis from the throne or to have him permanently put out of the way, and this suggests that she did not regard him as a threat to her security. Although contemporary illustrations almost invariably depict Hatchepsut as the dominant partner taking precedence over her co-ruler, Tuthmosis was always scrupulously accorded his correct royal regalia and, indeed, towards the end of the joint reign the two rulers are shown acting almost as equals. Certainly it would seem that Tuthmosis could have attempted to put an end to the situation had he so wished. He was by no means a weak or ineffectual man as his performance as pharaoh later proved.

  Then His Majesty said to them, ‘This daughter of mine… I have appointed as successor upon my throne. She shall sit on this marvellous dais. She shall direct the commons in every sphere of the palace. It is she who will lead you. Obey her words and unite yourselves at her command.’

  Text carved on the wall of Hatchepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri5

  A number of what can best be described as propaganda texts – records full of self-justification – survive to provide an official explanation of Hatchepsut’s unprecedented assumption of power.

  Fig. 36 Hatchepsut being suckled by the goddess Hathor

  These texts stress both her relationship with her earthly father, the pharaoh, and her divine link with the gods, emphasizing over and over again her temporal and spiritual right to rule. The most explicit of these is the record of her ‘divine birth’, preserved on the wall of her Deir el-Bahri temple. Here, in a series of cartoons and brief captions, Hatchepsut reveals to the world that she is actually the natural daughter of the great god Amen, who had predestined his child for the crown. Amen, cunningly disguised as Tuthmosis I, is shown visiting Queen Ahmose in her chamber where, in an appropriately restrained scene, he fills her nostrils with the breath of life. The resulting pregnancy of the queen is made discreetly obvious, and the god Khnum is shown modelling the body and soul of the infant Hatchepsut on his potter’s wheel, promising her anxious father Amen, ‘I will shape for you your daughter…’ Hatchepsut’s miraculous birth, and the goddess Hathor’s introduction of the baby to the proud father, are made clear. Finally Hatchepsut is presented before all the gods, who accept her as a future king of Egypt. A filial devotion to the god Amen was emphasized throughout Hatchepsut’s life: ‘I am truly His daughter, the one who glorifies Him.’

  I was promoted before the companions, knowing that I was in Her favour. They set me to be the chief of Her house; the Palace – may it thrive in health in prosperity – was under my supervision. I was the judge of the whole land and the Overseer of the Granaries of Amen, Senenmut.

  Part of a long text of self-justification carved on the base of a statue of Senenmut

  Hatchepsut must have been supported in her rule by many loyal male civil servants, several of whom had already served under her father and her husband. The enigmatic ‘Steward of Amen’ Senenmut stands out as being the most important and able administrator of this period.6 Originally a man of relatively low birth who started his career in the army, Senenmut remained a bachelor and devoted his life to Hatchepsut’s service. His precise relationship with the queen is unclear, although he seems to have been accorded unusual privileges for a non-royal male and it is difficult to determine exactly how much of his meteoric rise to prominence was due to his personal relationship with the widowed queen. He certainly made an impact on the bureaucracy, managing to acquire at least twenty important secular and religious posts in the course of his varied life, and his titles attest his role as effective controller of the state finances
. He himself rather immodestly claimed responsibility for the construction of the most important of the queen’s monuments at Thebes, although there is no proof that he was actually an architect. He is most frequently depicted in what was probably one of his most prestigious roles, as tutor to the young Princess Neferure, heiress presumptive to the Egyptian throne. Egyptologists originally believed that Neferure, ‘Lady of the Two Lands, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt’, had died in childhood, but new evidence suggests that she probably lived to survive her mother, and may even have been the first ‘Great Wife’ of her half-brother Tuthmosis III.

  Senenmut managed to acquire enough wealth to build himself two expensive tombs, a relatively conspicuous gallery tomb at Gurnah and a more secret and secure chamber near the northern edge of Hatchepsut’s temple courtyard where he intended to be buried; a number of ostraca show that he actually diverted the workmen away from the official temple-project to build the latter. He seems to have either fallen from grace or died before the end of Hatchepsut’s reign, and he was never interred in his splendid but unfinished tomb. The memory of Senenmut was persecuted after his death, when the majority of his reliefs and statues were defaced and his tomb was desecrated. This destruction may have been ordered by Hatchepsut as the result of the bitter quarrel which ended their relationship, although it may equally well have been performed by those who later damaged Hatchepsut’s monuments in the same way.

  The general emphasis of Hatchepsut’s long reign was on civil affairs, particularly on an intensive programme of building which included the restoration of temples and the erection of impressive monuments, all high-profile activities calculated to recall Egypt’s former glories and to install confidence in her people. As the gods themselves had instructed their daughter, ‘You shall refound the land, you shall repair what is in ruins in it, you shall make your chapels your monuments.’ There was a diminution in military activity at this time, possibly due to the fact that the female Hatchepsut would have been unable to physically lead her troops in battle without creating a certain loss of confidence, but trade flourished and there was a memorable Egyptian expedition to the exotic and far-away land of Punt during her Year 9. Full details of this mission, and the wondrous sights encountered, have been preserved as a wall-scene at Deir el-Bahri, where the curiously tall round huts of the natives, the comical appearance of the ruler of Punt and his amazingly fat wife and the marvellous goods brought back to Egypt, are all faithfully recorded. There is further evidence for a punitive expedition in Nubia towards the end of the reign, and it may well be that the lack of evidence for military campaigns may be giving a misleading impression of Egyptian insularity at this time.