The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt

by Kara Cooney

  As for her father, around the time of Hatshepsut’s birth Thutmose I was spending much of his time away from Egypt, on campaigns in Syria-Palestine and Nubia. When the king was home, his duties were to the gods’ upkeep, the law courts, and the servicing of the royal wives. He would have had little time (or inclination) to cuddle and console his many toddlers. It was probably a rare moment when the king felt compelled to visit the royal nursery, with its pandemonium of small children and babies, surrounded by the women who kept them safe, fed, educated, and under control. Thus it is doubtful that Hatshepsut and her father had an affectionate relationship when she was a young child. Getting to know children under the age of four, particularly little girls, must have been very low on the king’s priority list.

  TWO

  A Place of Her Own

  As the eldest child of the highest-ranking wife in the palace, Hatshepsut must have known she was special. And experience would prove to her that she was strong. Family members and tutors may have told her so, but the knowledge that she would manifest great power likely came from deep inside her, from her quiet moments in the temple, from talking to the god Amen or the goddess Mut. We can imagine her as a serious, quiet child who carefully watched everything that happened around her, attending to the attitudes and postures of her royal mother in court rituals, or to the words spoken by her father when he read the incantations on festival days.

  In the palace apartments, she likely looked on as her father’s women vied for his attention by spending hours at their dressing tables fashioning fabulous wig and hair creations and smoothing their young bodies with perfumed oils and exotic scents. She would have noticed when some of these women swelled with pride and pregnancy as they made plans for a son, and seen the grief in their eyes after they had delivered a dead baby. She probably recognized the worried look of mothers whose infants were on the brink of death, about to be yanked from this world by some unnameable demon that could not be placated by even the most generous offerings.

  Perhaps Hatshepsut caught a glimpse of the royal princes at their daily lessons in the House of Life—this boisterous, rowdy crowd of boys who shoved and yelled and jostled as they sat cross-legged with pens in hand, until their teacher whacked them on their backs with a switch to keep them at their scribal practice. In any case, she did not belong with the princes and their pursuits of chariot racing and archery. She may have listened as the other princesses talked about new dresses with fancy braided fringes and jewelry, but perhaps she did not share their interests; these girls were not eager to learn about the world outside.

  Most likely Hatshepsut worked quietly with her tutor, who would instruct her and only her on how to see shapes in the sacred script, how to find the names of the gods and of the kings in the ornate writings, and how to form her own sacred images with a pen on her wax tablet. She also helped the God’s Wife of Amen to ready rituals for the Great God in Karnak. She memorized the proper incantations and the correct gestures and movements. She yearned to please the King of the Gods and for him to find favor in her person. As the eldest child of Aakheperkare Thutmose, the Lord of the Two Lands, He of the Sedge and the Bee, and his Great Wife, Ahmes, she needed to be strong. Much was expected of her.

  We have little direct knowledge of Hatshepsut’s perspective on her own importance and her place in the world, but she would have grown up in a number of palaces around Egypt, most of them easily reached via the plush, luxurious royal barges that traveled up and down the Nile. The most important members of the royal family needed to be mobile. They might want to attend an important religious festival in Memphis, or stay at the southern town of Elephantine while the king was on a campaign in Nubia and Kush, or spend time in the verdant green of the Fayum while the king was hunting hippos with his noblemen. The King’s Great Wife, Ahmes, and their children accompanied him on some of his travels, but most of Hatshepsut’s early life would have been spent in Thebes, in the southern Nile valley, sacred to the god Amen.

  Hatshepsut’s immediate family included the most important people in all of Egypt if not the entire Mediterranean World. Her father was king—the link between the gods and the Egyptian people. Her mother was the king’s most highly placed wife and the most sacred vessel of his fertile abilities. Hatshepsut also had two highly placed brothers, perhaps her full brothers, princes of great importance in the dynastic succession—Wadjmose and Amenmose, one of whom was destined to be the next king of Egypt and thus Hatshepsut’s husband.1 Her sister Neferubity must have been a close friend and ally.2 Her wet nurse, Satre, was an intimate as well, because in the Egyptian mind, the bond of nursing had transformed Hatshepsut into Satre’s real blood daughter. Her half brother Thutmose was nothing more than a small prince in the arms of his highly ranked mother and second King’s Wife, Mutnofret. These were the essential players in Hatshepsut’s family, but we must remember that the quarters of the king’s women were also filled with Hatshepsut’s half brothers and sisters from lesser-ranked wives.

  At Thebes, the king likely had more than one palace. On the east bank, a ceremonial palace just at the entrance to Karnak bore a name that signified its importance to the king as chief priest: “I Am Not Far from Him,” with “Him” referring to Amen, the Great God and lord of Thebes.3 At this palace, Thutmose I wore the complex ceremonial attire and the tall crowns that demanded such attention and balance. Here he could meet with his chief priests and courtiers in preparation for important rituals and festivals, or to discuss temple administration. This palace was small but formal, in contrast to the sprawling and luxurious apartments occupied by his family.

  The actual living residence was probably built far from the crowded and dusty town of Thebes, a good distance from its sewage, flies, and thousands of smoky cooking fires. The royal palace may have even stood on the west bank, across the river from the town of Thebes, where it was quieter and where animals and birds were abundant. The palace would have been close to the Nile and its cool waters, but not situated so low that it could be destroyed by the annual floods. Only columns, balustrades, door thresholds, and sometimes toilets were made from stone. Unbaked Nile mud bricks were used to build the other structural elements; they were the main source of building material for everyone in ancient Egypt—peasants and elites alike. In the king’s palace, the walls were whitewashed and brightly painted with scenes of the flora and fauna of Egypt. Its rooms were appointed with soft, elegant furnishings. And everywhere servants moved about the complex—waving massive ostrich fans from the corner of an outdoor lounge to provide a cool breeze for the royal inhabitants, standing at the ready to fetch a cool drink or nourishment, assisting the royal family with wigs, makeup, and adornments, emptying chamber pots, and servicing the baser human needs of the royal family.

  The centerpiece of the palace was the audience hall and throne room, where the king sat to discuss formal matters with his courtiers. Hatshepsut would have seen little of these areas as a young child, although she may have been expected to show herself at official court functions as she grew older. Most of her time was spent with her many brothers and sisters and the courtiers’ children in the royal nursery. The children were allowed to run around naked; they played with balls, hoops, and sticks, waded in their courtyard pool, and napped in the shade of date palms. Royal children’s heads were shaved, except for small locks of hair that dangled down on the side of the head. This near-shaven look was not only a marker of status but also a practical expedient against lice infestations.

  As a small child, Hatshepsut was likely taught the discipline of standing still and stoic on a dais before a mass of people during formal engagements, and one wonders if she looked on with envy at the fidgeting and whining of other children. Hatshepsut must have always known the feeling of many eyes watching her, judging her bearing and expression. As the eldest King’s Daughter by the King’s Great Wife, Hatshepsut probably stood close to the king in important ceremonies and events in Thebes. She would have observed the king’s movements and heard his w
ords in the throne room, learning by osmosis the effective way to rule. As her father—one of the most successful warrior-kings Egypt had ever seen—relentlessly planned for campaign after campaign abroad, she received firsthand training in imperial domination. During the second year of her father’s reign, after he waged a successful military operation in Nubia, the army returned to Thebes with the mutilated corpse of a conquered enemy hanging upside down from the prow of his boat. Hatshepsut may have been a witness when this body was transferred to Karnak’s outer walls for a gruesome triumphal display—a real foe to enhance the symbolic images of violence and smiting carved on the exteriors of Egyptian temples. But perhaps she did not yet understand what she was seeing. She was just a baby, around a year and a half in age, and she likely did not even remember the sight. Or maybe she just imagined that she had seen it, because this triumphant moment was spoken about so often that it was formally recorded during Thutmose I’s reign.4

  As a child, Hatshepsut probably saw the young black-skinned sons of the dead Nubian chieftain at her father’s court. Brought to Egypt for a kind of “reeducation,” they held their heads high in proud defiance of their new master, who had killed the rest of their family before their eyes. Thutmose was following a clever and age-old tactic: abduct elite foreign children of subjugated lands, train them from a young age to love and respect their conquerors, and then return them to their own land as puppet rulers beholden to Egypt, brainwashed to obey the very king who had enslaved and murdered their families and people. For her part, Hatshepsut would have learned from infancy what constituted a successful foreign policy toward rebels in Nubia, Egypt’s closest neighbor: utter destruction, brutal executions, and absolutely no mercy.

  By the age of ten, Hatshepsut may well have begun her travels abroad. An inscription from Hagr el-Merwa shows Thutmose I traveling up the Nile to Kurgus in modern-day Sudan with a large entourage, including his Great Wife, Ahmes, his crown prince, Amenmose, and a princess whose name is barely legible in the inscription, but which might read Hatshepsut.5 Journeying with her father while on campaign in Upper Nubia would have given an impressionable and smart girl direct knowledge of how a subjugated enemy should be treated, how cheap the lives of these exploited people were, and how brutally and publicly rebels needed to be punished if Egypt was to continue to prosper by extracting gold and minerals from this southern land.

  Hatshepsut may have witnessed public executions and other displays of violence against the Nubian people, as they constituted the main foe during her father’s reign. Indeed, there is no evidence that children were shielded from the violent realities of life, and it is likely that as King’s Daughter she was well placed to witness some of the most ruthless moments of her father’s imperialism. She would have been taught that violence was necessary, even righteous. Hatshepsut must have understood that Nubia’s riches were Egypt’s birthright, but only attained once its inhabitants had been cruelly subjugated; only the king could deliver Egypt from the dangers its enemies presented.

  Hatshepsut’s formal education would have begun when she was four or five. It was unusual for an ancient Egyptian girl to be trained to read and write, but Hatshepsut was not a normal girl. She was meant to hold high religious office and to marry the next king of Egypt.

  First she was taught how to hold a scribe’s brush and ink palette in her lap while she sat cross-legged. As her instruction advanced, she learned the difference between formal hieroglyphic and cursive hieratic writing, to draw the many hundreds of hieroglyphs, and to memorize their phonetic equivalents and symbolic meanings. Gaining more confidence, she would make lists of words categorized into types, including the gods, people and professions, and animals. To master the written language, Hatshepsut would then read and copy all kinds of Egyptian literature—mythical stories, ethical instructions, songs and hymns, and the great histories of the kings who had served Egypt before her father. The texts gave her training in leadership, ethics, religion, ritual, economics, morality, and history. In addition to copying these words onto a reusable wax tablet, Hatshepsut practiced her ink penmanship, learning how to hold the delicate brush, dip it into water, and then touch the cakes of red or black pigment to fill the brush with ink so that she could form swooping, liquid cursive script, or strictly balanced, formal, hieroglyphic images. She learned to read out loud, appreciating reading’s function as a social activity with a public purpose, unlike the solitary pursuit it is today.

  We don’t know the details of Hatshepsut’s education, only that such a highborn girl would have received the very best available. Excluded from any formal classroom instruction with her male peers, she was probably tutored in private as a young girl, spending most of her time with adults instead of children her own age. The other girls of the royal household were learning how to spin and weave linen cloth, how to create beautiful and ornate wigs and ornaments, perhaps even how to read and write a little. Whether Hatshepsut experienced her upbringing as lonely, we will never know.

  The responsibilities and training shouldered by young royals must have been burdensome, but Eighteenth Dynasty court life provided some moral support. It’s as if everyone knew that the king and queen would be neglectful, absent parents, as they moved through their sacred duties and political demands. Thus royal children were provided with a system of ersatz parentage—nurses and tutors from among the ranks of Egypt’s courtiers and administrators who were able to teach, scold, comfort, and love the royal princes and princesses.6 For a princess like Hatshepsut, a female nurse might have been more of a mother to her than the woman who gave birth to her. Her male tutor, Senimen, certainly provided her with more fatherly care and attention than Thutmose I, and all records show that he became a close ally and adviser to her later. The children of her nurses and tutors were meant to be like playmates or siblings with whom she could relax instead of compete.

  No one needed to tell the young Hatshepsut that she was different. It was apparent to her simply because she was a royal living among nonroyal courtiers, including her nurses, tutors, and their families, who likely treated her—even as a small child—with deference and respect. Such obsequious treatment kept her removed from the other inhabitants of the palace; Hatshepsut knew they were there to serve her, to be kind to her, to guide her, because she was more important than any of them and had greater responsibilities to uphold. She likely heard the daughters of her nurses talking about the men they were going to marry and the towns where they would live, the property they were taking with them into their marriage and the jewelry they were to receive. Making the right match was likely a constant topic of conversation for the wives and daughters of viziers, treasurers, stewards, and butlers who lived at the palace. Hatshepsut, however, knew that as the King’s Daughter she was exclusively destined to marry the next king, bound to whichever of her brothers lived to see that day.

  As she grew older, she may have witnessed some of the most beautiful and elegant of the courtiers’ daughters join the ranks of the King’s Wives and move into the royal harems to occasionally share the company and bed of her father. Hatshepsut might have noticed the conflicting emotions of these girls and their parents. We can only imagine the worry of a treasurer’s wife who knew that her lovely daughter was destined for a life in the harem—an ambitious move to say the least, one that could vault a young woman to the very top of society if her son became the next king, but no doubt a lonely existence among many other contenders, all of whom shared the same man and whose importance rested for the most part upon their breeding capabilities.

  As soon as she could walk and talk, Hatshepsut would have begun training to become the next God’s Wife of Amen. She likely assisted Ahmes-Nefertari and Merytamen, both of whom had once been a wife to the king, as well as a wife to the god Amen in his temple. Hatshepsut would have learned many of the more mundane things about her role in temple activity—including the correct actions and postures to assume during temple rituals and offerings, the appropriate dresses and wigs to wear for
certain rites, and the proper ways to address the god and move within his temple space. She would have learned how to effectively hold and shake a sistrum, a kind of rattle, and how to chant and sing to the god. She would have committed to memory the words of incantations and songs—by rote at first, only understanding the deeper mysteries with age, experience, and further instruction.

  We don’t know how old Hatshepsut was when she officially became the God’s Wife of Amen, but she may have been very young.7 Thutmose I likely wanted the influential priestess position filled by one of his own direct lineage. We have no idea if such an appointment demanded that Hatshepsut physically act as wife in reality, if she experienced menstruation and puberty before her initiation, or if she witnessed the rituals of the God’s Hand priestesses before her own induction into the sacred mystery.8 There is no evidence to suggest that the ancient Egyptians shielded children from human sexuality. On the contrary, it seems that little girls as young as eight or nine became objects of sexual attention. If Hatshepsut’s destiny was to become the God’s Wife of Amen herself, to connect the god’s rebirth to her father’s kingship, then she had to begin her training early, including knowledge of the more sexual aspects of the job.

  Despite the separation enforced by palace duties and strictures, Hatshepsut’s relationship with her mother and older female relations must have proved vital to the formation of her character and to the understanding of her own importance. Hatshepsut learned leadership skills from powerful women with proven track records. Ahmes-Nefertari was arguably the very first God’s Wife. But Ahmes-Nefertari had also been wife to King Ahmose, whose many campaigns against the Hyksos demanded that she rule the homeland in his absence. She was also mother to King Amenhotep I, for whom she had acted as regent when he took the throne as a young boy. If nothing else, Ahmes-Nefertari knew that a highborn woman could exercise great political, ideological, military, and economic power. Merytamen, likely the acting God’s Wife at the time of Hatshepsut’s birth, was wife to King Amenhotep I. Despite her lack of success breeding a King’s Son, she still wielded great authority as Egypt’s most important high priestess.