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

by Kara Cooney

  Nefrure was a formidable presence; even as a girl, she had courtiers and a household of her own as God’s Wife of Amen. An inscription placed in the Sinai in year 11, when she was around thirteen years old, shows her offering directly to the goddess Hathor—this level of cultic access was typically reserved for kings.31 Some have even suggested that Nefrure was encouraged to transcend her roles as priestess and queen so that she could emulate the female sovereign her mother had become. One statue found in Rome in 1856 that now resides in the Museo Barracco depicts a female sphinx with a curled wig. It was probably produced during the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III and is the largest sphinx that can be attributed to this period. The name of the woman for whom it was cut has been lost, but some Egyptologists make a convincing argument that it depicts Nefrure at the height of her power.32

  Even if she was a wife to her half brother Thutmose III,33 Nefrure may have preferred to use her title God’s Wife of Amen, just as her mother before her had, because of the power associated with it. Or perhaps it was understood that every God’s Wife was also a King’s Wife, given that there is no evidence the royal women could marry anyone else. Or maybe Hatshepsut demanded that Nefrure only be named God’s Wife to keep the powers of this priestly office in her camp instead of under the influence of her co-king and his entourage. Confusion continues to swirl around Nefrure: What was her place in the family? How important was she to both Hatshepsut and Thutmose III? What motivated her: power, religious duty, loyalty to her mother? Our bewilderment is compounded by Nefrure’s later obliteration from temple reliefs: an indication that darker days lay ahead for the female caretakers of the Thutmoside family.

  EIGHT

  The Setting Sun

  Now in her late thirties, Hatshepsut seems to have devoted her time as king to cult activity, either by building temples or by celebrating festivals. She was still the senior monarch, but Thutmose III had emerged as an energetic co-king. New temple scenes were ordered to show and name the junior monarch—if not to put him on equal footing with his senior king, then at least to raise his status. Now in his twenties, Thutmose III ruled as commander of the army. If he had wanted to get rid of his aunt, this would have been the time to do it, but there is no evidence that he made any such move. What did he think about being the only male king in Egypt’s fifteen-hundred-year pharaonic history to rule as the junior of a woman monarch? Did he prepare for the day when he would finally rule alone? We can only wonder. The evidence suggests that Hatshepsut and Thutmose III worked within a partnership of mutual dependence because of the strange way in which their joint rule had been formed at its outset.

  The year 16 Sed festival had already changed their relationship irrevocably, and to Thutmose III’s benefit, by elevating the nature of his kingship, finally making him a visible partner. He seems to have kept his altered throne name at the jubilee—which had been changed from the original Menkheperre to Menkheperkare with Hatshepsut’s accession, but in just four short years, around year 20,1 he would have the agency to change it back, moving from “the Manifestation of the Soul of Re Is Enduring” to “the Manifestation of Re Is Enduring,” no longer separating him from the true embodiments of the sun god.

  After the Sed festival, Hatshepsut began work on the artistic masterpiece of her reign: a small chapel of sparkling deep red quartzite built in the heart of Karnak Temple, which is fittingly called the Red Chapel by Egyptologists. The reliefs and texts found here represent the culmination of Hatshepsut’s conception of divine kingship. Nowhere is she represented as a woman; rather, she is always fashioned with a masculine kingly form—broad shoulders, narrow hips, muscular legs, and a masculine nose and chin—that makes her depiction on this monument almost indistinguishable from her nephew’s. Apparently the artisans who carved their figures side by side into the red stone were instructed to make the co-kings look exactly alike, as if they were replicas of the same king. There are more figures of Hatshepsut than Thutmose III in the Red Chapel, and she was still given the primary position in each scene, but something about their relationship had changed. Only her names and pronouns distinguish her from her nephew and betray her feminine nature. Thutmose III and Hatshepsut are placed symmetrically—as partners—in the relief scenes on many of the carved blocks: both oversee countless festivals and religious rites and act in concert to keep Egypt in the gods’ good graces.

  Hatshepsut had to relocate the barque shrine that was standing where she intended to build her Red Chapel; it was a shrine at which she had performed countless rituals.2 All of this work to disassemble structures and construct new ones demonstrates how vital Hatshepsut felt it was to inject her presence—through the carving of her images and names—into the very core of Karnak Temple where the great god Amen dwelt and was transformed. Perhaps she was looking forward to her legacy after death, when future kings would perform cultic rituals to Amen while lamplight flickered over her many images, just as she had made offerings in the sanctuary of her forefathers. Hatshepsut wanted to leave an indelible mark on Karnak’s most sacred heart, and near her new barque shrine3 she built a suite of rooms called the Palace of Truth that was decorated with her introduction into the gods’ presence and highlighted by a scene of purification by two gods who poured streams of holy water over her head and welcomed her into their holy midst.4

  She called her new barque chapel “the Place in the Heart of Amen.” Some of the blocks were so dark red they appeared to be purple, the perfect color to evoke the sun as he expired and slipped below the western horizon full of the potentiality of rebirth. It was a fitting construction for the last years of Hatshepsut’s pious reign: it exemplified her claims to supernatural abilities and characteristics,5 and by representing her heir Thutmose III, it promoted her Thutmoside dynasty in the future on her terms. On this structure, she explained how and why her kingship was supported by the gods and highlighted her support of Thutmose III’s junior leadership. The walls featured a list of the king’s duties, with an emphasis on the obligations of being chief priest: how she stocked the altars with food and drink, tended the temple and palace lands, relegated duties to her priests, created and implemented laws and regulations, built temples of sandstone and granite, created statuary of herself and her co-king, constructed a proper homelike setting for each and every god according to his or her requirements (Mut liked beer, Amen needed his wife’s sexual abilities, etc.), and created the appropriate conditions for each god’s “primeval time,” or sexual rebirth. Finally, like a good ruler, she sought out economic growth to increase her empire and expand her treasuries to support the Egyptian deities.6

  The Red Chapel was a culmination of what Hatshepsut believed her kingship to be, and to Hatshepsut that meant unceasing and untiring activity, always being there when the gods needed her. She used the Red Chapel blocks to highlight her piety by showing the daily meal for the god Amen in his sanctuary (perhaps this was something that she enjoyed doing, like a daily meditation that calmed her and cleared out her head): awakening the statue of the god, purifying and anointing him, changing his clothing, offering food and drink, then resealing and veiling the gilded shrine. Upon leaving, she would have erased all traces of having been there; a scene from the Red Chapel shows Hatshepsut herself sweeping the floor of her footprints as she backs out of the sanctuary.

  Another scene from the Red Chapel suggests that such rituals were performed for statues of the living king, a new hallmark of the New Kingdom seemingly started by Hatshepsut and continued by the likes of Amenhotep III and Ramses II.7 Thutmose III is depicted offering in front of a statue of Hatshepsut as Osiris at one of the way-station chapels on the processional avenue between Karnak and Luxor Temples. In another scene, Hatshepsut herself is represented performing rituals before her own Osirian statue. Such ritual activity reinforced the mysteries of the Egyptian monarchy at the most profound level, with the living king offering to the larger kingship, of which he was a part but still simultaneously served.

  Given that cu
lt activity was so time-consuming, particularly for a pious monarch like Hatshepsut, the female king needed support in the form of priests or priestesses in temples throughout the land.8 The royal family could not spend all their time in the temple. Instead, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut probably passed most of their days and nights in the plastered and painted mud-brick palaces along the Nile and scattered around the delta, shaded by palm trees and near pools of cool water. The junior king probably went wherever important administrative or military duties pulled him, while Hatshepsut likely preferred her beloved hometown of Thebes.

  Apparently Thutmose III was constantly in transit, whether visiting the harem palace at Medinet el-Gurob at the mouth of the Fayum oasis, working with venerable elites at Memphis, celebrating Atum’s creation at Heliopolis, or inspecting the fortresses along the northwest border from his base at Perunefer. He was fulfilling the duties of the junior king, to the benefit of both himself and Hatshepsut, becoming the Thutmoside heir Hatshepsut needed. Evidence suggests that sporting activities—like hunting, archery, rowing, running, and charioteering—were important to Thutmose III and his entourage. We can only imagine the Egyptians energetically relating the zeal of their young, fit king and his manly exploits on the battlefield or hunting grounds. The previous years under Hatshepsut’s leadership had been rather thin in the area of royal sport, what with the partnership of a woman and a child king, and before that with the short-lived Thutmose II and the older Thutmose I. These last years of the joint reign must have been an exciting time for the young king to display his physical prowess. The Egyptians had not had a vigorous young man on the Egyptian throne for generations. Thutmose III fit the ideals and expectations of the royal hymns of old.

  Thutmose III’s eldest son was named Amenemhat, and Nefrure—if indeed she was married to the king—was most likely to have been the boy’s mother; Amenemhat would have been seven or eight years old in Hatshepsut’s last years.9 But this child is hard to find in the ancient sources, and uncertainty swirls about him. It remains unclear how many times Nefrure became pregnant, if ever; how many times she brought a child to term; how many miscarriages or stillbirths she suffered; or any other details about her ability to bear children. Thutmose III had many other wives, most of them unnamed and unrecorded—though some, like Queen Satiah, the daughter of the treasurer and tutor Ahmose-Pennekhbet, came from the families of powerful officials—and they all would have been engaged in a high-stakes race to produce sons. Viable successors were always a necessary commodity. A king wasn’t truly accomplished until his heir was securely placed on the throne after him. Perhaps Hatshepsut dwelled upon this fact and was anxious to fill in this last remaining gap.

  Hatshepsut was now an androgynous, mature, and unmarried female king, and the long-term possibilities of claiming future rule for her direct lineage (via Nefrure) were fated to fail. Everything would have depended on the political success of just one girl. But there is indeed evidence that Nefrure, like her mother, reached a status higher than that of the typical Egyptian queen and God’s Wife of Amen. In the reliefs on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut’s funerary temple, Egyptian artisans were ordered to carve a large-scale female figure (whose name is now erased but who many think was once Nefrure); she is shown standing directly before a goddess, a kingly presumption not fit for a queen and proof for some that Nefrure was indeed raised as her mother’s heir to take over some kind of shared kingship with Thutmose III.10 Perhaps Hatshepsut was now considering Nefrure as a kind of female heir. At this point in Hatshepsut’s reign, Nefrure was labeled on a Sinai inscription as Mistress of the Two Lands and Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt—titles used by the female king Hatshepsut herself.11 The stela from the Sinai seems to be dated to Nefrure’s own regnal year, an audacity in itself—“year 11 of the majesty of the God’s Wife Nefrure”—as if she were a king in her own right.12 On the same Sinai stela, her name was followed by royal epithets like “living forever” or “stability and power like Re,” which should only follow the name or image of a king, not of a woman, no matter how highly born. All of this hints that Hatshepsut really did intend for Nefrure to become some kind of coruler to Thutmose III. It was an indication that she trusted her daughter more than anyone else to keep her legacy secure: Hatshepsut continually placed her in powerful positions, set her up for more authority in the future, and depended upon her to keep the family dynasty thriving.

  Between years 18 and 21, Hatshepsut ordered craftsmen to create another such image of Nefrure, this time at her Djeser Djeseru temple in Thebes, where everyone would see it, and with the title Mistress of the Two Lands, which was reserved only for the highest-ranked queens capable of political leadership.13 Whatever the real intentions of this scene, it seems to have been too much for some to take. Nefrure’s names were later removed and changed to those of Hatshepsut’s mother, Ahmes, long since dead, suggesting that depicting Nefrure in such a powerful position was considered inappropriate by influential power players. There is further evidence to the same effect: in the Upper Chapel of Anubis at the same temple, Nefrure’s images were replaced by carvings of Thutmose I, Hatshepsut’s father, modifications many believe were made during Hatshepsut’s lifetime.14 It is possible that Hatshepsut had wanted her daughter to attain a status approaching her own, a level of power that neared that of a king, but she was ultimately forced to change her plans. It is likely that Thutmose III, or the Amen priesthood, or some faction of elites resisted, fearing the creation of another strange male-female coregency, this time beyond the justification of necessity and dynastic security. Hatshepsut apparently relented, bowing to political or religious pressures and ordering the removal of all such images from her funerary temple. Or maybe no one dared speak against the senior king at all. Nefrure might have died during her mother’s reign, ruining all such hopes for an heir of her own lineage.

  If Hatshepsut was really considering the elevation of Nefrure to co-king, then it suggests that there was more to her own rule than selfless protection of her dynasty; perhaps her power had developed beyond a need to serve the gods and the country. Or it raises the possibility that by the time Thutmose III had become an active co-king, she now saw this arrangement of elevating Nefrure as preferable to just letting Thutmose pass the kingship on to an heir of his choice. If she was really attempting to give Nefrure unprecedented power as God’s Wife and queen (or even co-king) alongside Thutmose III, then she was meddling with affairs of succession after her death, trying to force the selection of an heir from her chosen wife. If all of these hypotheses bear out, then Hatshepsut did finally become a revolutionary thinker, a romantic idealist who believed she could permanently change the nature of the kingship, by appending a queen, in the modern sense of the word, as a coruler. This may have been Hatshepsut’s last, best attempt to institutionalize the ongoing power of a woman, a decision she could make only after years of authority had changed her character. When she began her rise to power, it was in a mad scramble to save her dynasty. When she claimed the kingship, there is every suggestion that she was constantly negotiating and adapting her femininity to accepted traditions. But then, finally, in her last years, secure upon her throne and possibly lost in anxious ruminations, she acted on her own personal investments, attempting to institute a significant change in Egypt’s system of kingship on behalf of her daughter. The details are murky, but Hatshepsut’s orders toward the end of her reign suggest her modus operandi had shifted.

  Despite Hatshepsut’s maneuvering (perceived or real) to ensure her daughter the best possible political and religious positions, all we see today are hints of Nefrure’s name, and the clear evidence of a systematic campaign to remove her from the record. Why? Nefrure was also born to Thutmose II, making her a sibling of Thutmose III. Who would harm the King’s Sister, ordering an assault on the girl most closely connected to Hatshepsut? If Nefrure’s execrations happened during her mother’s lifetime, it could indicate that the God’s Wife had fallen out of favor with one or both of the ruling king
s. If her names were removed after Nefrure’s death, after another woman took over as chief queen of Thutmose III and God’s Wife of Amen, it is likely that people suffered her aspirations and presumptions only while she was alive and gladly removed any trace in her absence. But in the end, the destruction of her names implies that Nefrure’s claims to kingly power—at least in the way she was depicted as standing directly before divinities, offering to them as a king, and calling herself Mistress of the Two Lands—were seen as overreaching and something that needed to be expunged.

  Hatshepsut lost all ambitions for her daughter when Nefrure’s names were erased. If the execrations happened in these last years of Hatshepsut’s life, this massive political defeat must have been a devastating end to all the female king’s plans and ambitions, perhaps even hastening an early death. Indeed, Nefrure’s presumptive claims of royal titles are enough for some Egyptologists to whisper that Hatshepsut did not die a natural death at all15 but was helped to a premature end because her presumptions for Nefrure were made out of personal ambitions that were likely antithetical to the agenda of her partner on the throne.

  Senenmut’s role in Nefrure’s fall is unknown. According to the sources, Senenmut was the overseer of the ongoing work at Djeser Djeseru, and ostensibly he was the one who supervised the creation of Nefrure’s images and possibly even the one who subsequently had to see to their removal. Because Nefrure had the potential to be a great future patron to Senenmut, just as her mother had been, he may not only have protected her but also actively promoted her interests. If she were to fall from grace, Senenmut would have tumbled as well.