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

by Kara Cooney

  6. For the translation, see Dorman, “Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 41.

  7. The Ennead simply means “The Nine” and refers to the first generations of divinities after the first creation: Atum, Shu, and Tefnut; Geb and Nut; Osiris and Isis; Seth and Nephthys. These are the nine gods of the Helipolitian creation, since the god Atum created his First Time at Iunu, the city of the sun, called Heliopolis by the Greeks. For more, see Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (London: Routledge, 1983).

  8. The Sehel text is published in Labib Habachi, “Two Graffiti at Sehēl from the Reign of Queen Hatshepsut,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 16, no. 2 (1957): 88–104. The translation follows his.

  9. Dorman, “Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 48.

  10. For this important block, now located in Luxor Museum, see H. Chevrier, “Rapport sur les Travaux de Karnak (1933–1934),” Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 34 (1934): 172, plate 4; Abeer el-Shahawy, Luxor Museum: The Glory of Ancient Thebes (Cairo: Farid Atiya Press, 2005), 116–17; and Peter F. Dorman, “Hatshepsut: Princess to Queen to Co-Ruler,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 88.

  11. This limestone block was found in 1930 by the French archaeologist Henri Chevrier at Karnak, and it belongs to a chapel dismantled toward the end of her reign or after. It is now displayed in the Luxor Museum. See Chevrier, “Rapport sur les Travaux de Karnak (1933–1934),” plate 4. For a discussion of the image, see Karl Leser’s Karnak page on his website at http://​maat-​ka-​ra.​de/.

  12. The translation is based on Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion, 231–32. The mention of “his majesty” is confusing and unclarified, and although Warburton sees this as referring to the god “Amen,” I am not convinced because the god is referenced later in the text. Also see Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 22. For a description and image of block 287 with the Luxor oracle, see Schnittger, Hatschepsut: Eine Frau als König von Ägypten, 42.

  13. The translation is based on Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion, 232.

  14. The translation is based on Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2:28.

  15. This text appears on Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel and is in reference to the coronation. The translation is based on Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion, 229.

  16. Ibid., 230.

  17. For these scenes, see Franck Burgos and François Larché, La chapelle Rouge: Le sanctuaire de barque d’Hatshepsout, vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 2006). Her coronation is also depicted at her Deir el-Bahri Temple of Millions of Years as well as at Buhen Temple (now reconstructed at the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum since the creation of Lake Nasser).

  18. Although some might argue that this merging with Amen is meant to be sexual in nature, it is doubtful this is what is meant by this new prenomen. She melded her essence with his and took on his powers and abilities through that process of royal initiation.

  19. The nebty name was the Two Mistresses name, and the writing shows the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjyt. For more on the titulary of ancient Egyptian kings, see Peter A. Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), and Jürgen von Beckerath, Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, 2nd ed. (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern), 1999. For a discussion of the titulary of Hatshepsut, see Gay Robins, “The Names of Hatshepsut as King,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 85 (1999): 103–12.

  20. Murnane, for example, argues that the oracular events promoted Hatshepsut’s claim to the throne by expressing Amen’s doubts concerning Thutmose III’s ability to rule (Ancient Egyptian Coregencies, 33–34).

  21. These first obelisks were placed at East Karnak. Her second pair commemorated her Sed festival in year 16 and were placed in the Wadjyt hall of her father, Thutmose I, or in front of the fifth pylon. See Blyth, Karnak, 55. For a digital reconstruction of the obelisks in the Wadjyt hall, see the UCLA Digital Karnak website at http://​dlib.​etc.​ucla.​edu/​projects/​Karnak/​feature/​Obelisks​Of​Wadjet​Hall.

  22. The addition of the element of ka, or “soul,” does seem to move Thutmose III one step from the source of active creation, but why was this particular element added to the boy king’s name? Did the ka denote a masculine element that Hatshepsut lacked? Perhaps the change was orchestrated by an oracle of Amen to validate Hatshepsut as the leading king in a feminine-masculine pair. Or was the ka linked to Maatkare and therefore Hatshepsut’s place on the throne, thus making the claim that Thutmose III was dependent on her rule for his own? Hatshepsut never explains why the name was altered, but she obviously felt that it was necessary: Thutmose III’s kingship had to change to fit her rule.

  23. No previous king documented his coronation so extensively. This was another one of those exclusionary and secret moments that Hatshepsut felt she had to publish; the reasons for this documentation are not stated, but it likely was done to justify her insecure kingship. Thutmose III would follow suit with such published imagery of his crowning, probably because the origins of his own kingship were also perilous. See Schnittger, Hatschepsut, 44–45.

  24. Betsy M. Bryan, “The Temple of Mut: New Evidence on Hatshepsut’s Building Activity,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 181–83.

  25. The translation is based on Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2:26.

  26. The translation follows James P. Allen, “The Role of Amun,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 84.

  27. For more on the mythological foundations of divine androgyny in connection with female rule, see Troy, Patterns of Queenship, 12–32.

  28. For Amen and Amenet, see Sethe, Amun und die acht Urgötter; Assmann, Egyptian Solar Religion; and Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), 136–37.

  29. The translation is based on Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2:26.

  30. The passage is from Hatshepsut’s birth mythology. See Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 1, 248–50.

  31. The first clear evidence for the Opet festival is from Hatshepsut’s reign, and some suggest it was during her rule that the festival actually began. See William J. Murnane, “Opetfest,” in Lexikon der Ägyptologie, vol. 4, ed. W. Helck and E. Otto (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1982), 574–79; John C. Darnell, “Opet Festival,” UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2010, http://​escholarship.​org/​uc/​item/​4739r3fr; and Blyth, Karnak, 53. I, however, prefer to see in her reliefs the first open publication of the Opet Festival.

  32. An alabaster kohl jar found at the Ramesseum includes Ahmes’s name with both Thutmose I and Thutmose II, indicating that she lived into the latter’s reign at least and probably longer. See J. E. Quibell, The Ramesseum (London: B. Quaritch, 1898).

  33. This translation matches Bryan, “The Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 242.

  34. Gabolde, Monuments décorés en bas relief, 164–79. The removal of Thutmose III’s names suggests that she may even have been plotting his ultimate removal, although there is no direct evidence of any such plans. If Hatshepsut ever conceived of such a coup, there is no confirmation of it or its failure.

  35. These four types of social power are discussed in Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

  Chapter Six: Keeping the Kingship

  1. Blyth, Karnak, 60–62.

  2. See Murnane, Ancient Egyptian Coregencies.

  3. The same could be said of the later coregency of Neferneferuaten (probably formerly known as Nefertiti) with her husband Akhenaten and (probably later) her son Tutankhaten. See Aidan Dodson, Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2009), 33–52.

  4. Although new coregents often began their own year count on appointme
nt—so that one might see Year X of Regent A; Year Y of Regent B (Murnane, Ancient Egyptian Coregencies)—this seems not always to have been the case in the New Kingdom. Hatshepsut does have one date assigned just to her, without mention of Thutmose III, and it was fittingly found at Karnak, one of her main foundations of power. See Hornung, Krauss, and Warburton, Ancient Egyptian Chronology, 201.

  5. According to Dorman, a “general avoidance of attaching a specific regnal date to Hatshepsut alone, noticeable even on the monuments for which she took primary responsibility, is part and parcel of the etiquette of coregency that Hatshepsut devised in order to bring historical reality into concord with her ideological claims” (“Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 54).

  6. For the Punt inscriptions, see Kurt Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 2, ed. Georg Steindorff, Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums 4 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichssche Buchhandlung, 1906), 319–21.

  7. Nehesy’s tomb was constructed at the northern necropolis of Saqqara. Bryan therefore suggests that he was carrying out the Punt mission under direct orders from a northern vizier, perhaps Neferweben, and not the southern vizier, Useramen (“Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 77).

  8. For more information about the land of Punt, see Louise Bradbury, “Reflections on Travelling to ‘God’s Land’ and Punt in the Middle Kingdom,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 25 (1988): 127–56, Rolf Herzog, Punt, Abhandlungen des Deutsches Archäologischen Instituts Kairo, Ägyptische Reihe 6 (Glückstadt: Verlag J. J. Augustin, 1968); Kenneth Kitchen, “The Land of Punt,” in The Archaeology of Africa, ed. Thurstan Shaw et al. (London: Routledge, 1993); and Dimitri Meeks, “Locating Punt,” in Mysterious Lands, Encounters with Ancient Egypt 5, ed. David B. O’Connor and Stephen G. J. Quirke (London: University College London Press, Institute of Archaeology, 2003), 53–80. Officials connected to Hatshepsut’s Punt expedition placed great value on it, mentioning it in their statue and tomb inscriptions. Many promotions were made just after year 9. JJ Shirley, personal communication, 2014.

  9. Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 2, 339–40. Also see Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion, 247.

  10. War led to new sources of income; indeed, in the ancient world, getting rich was the chief reason to wage war. See Spalinger, “Covetous Eyes South,” in Cline and O’Connor, Thutmose III: A New Biography, 344–69; for the men enriched by military campaigns during the reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, see Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 101–7.

  11. Puyemre’s may have only been “new” on his father’s side. His mother was a wet nurse to Thutmose II, and thus he grew up in the palace. Puyemre was married to Seniseneb, a Divine Adoratrice and daughter of Hapuseneb, the First High Priest of Amen. Both of these men were connected to the Thutmoside family, which allowed them to consolidate power within the Amen priesthood by giving offices to friends of the Thutmosides. See Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 70, 109–10.

  12. Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 109–10.

  13. His seal with this title is on page 111 of Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh.

  14. Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 98. However, new work suggests that Senimen was instead appointed as tutor by Thutmose II with Senenmut taking over as tutor after him. JJ Shirley, personal communication, 2014.

  15. Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 121.

  16. The statue is currently in the Cairo Museum (JdÉ 47278). See Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 124.

  17. Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 94.

  18. Bryan suggests that the new description of the duties of the vizier written during the reign of Thutmose III may have been a reaction to Senenmut’s overreaching: “This last title (that is, judge of the gate in the entire land) suggests that Senenmut could usurp the authority of the vizier’s office” (ibid., 93–94).

  19. Shaun Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (London: Routledge, 2008).

  20. This proscription gives us an idea of how important the nurse Satre was to Hatshepsut, because in this statue (in the Cairo Museum, JdÉ 56264), the older woman was able to show herself holding a figure of Hatshepsut as king sitting on her lap.

  21. Indeed, an inscription on the back of one of these ostraca reads “a lean, hairy rat with prodigiously long whiskers”; see W. C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, vol. 2 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1959), 110. This description may refer to Senenmut, and perhaps he was a wiry, ratlike man who was overly obsequious to Hatshepsut. There are four such drawings of Senenmut’s face: three ostraca are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the other example is drawn directly onto his limestone tomb wall in Theban Tomb 353.

  22. Senenmut claims the earliest tutor statue, the earliest statue of someone holding a shrine, the first statue of someone holding a coiled surveyor’s rope, and the first statue of someone holding a votive emblem (in this case, Hatshepsut’s rebus name of a snake wearing a horned sun disk on ka arms). He also owned his own quartzite sarcophagus in the manner of the royal sarcophagi, and he was honored with his own devotional reliefs at Hatshepsut’s funerary temple. See Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 107–33.

  23. Keller, “Statuary of Hatshepsut,” 117.

  24. Senenmut had both of his parents buried in a chamber just in front of his own grand tomb chapel (Theban Tomb 71), a showplace that he was building in western Thebes for his high rank. He was able to purchase a painted coffin and gilded mummy mask for his mother, Hatnefer, probably in advance of her death. Senenmut also commissioned funerary papyri, canopic equipment, silver pitchers, a silver bowl, and a precious heart scarab set in a gold bezel for his mother. He made sure that she was carefully mummified with the highest-quality linens from Hatshepsut’s royal workshops, and he included funerary offerings of wine, beer, and foodstuffs, much of it marked with Hatshepsut’s name as king.

  Senenmut even had his father, Ramose, reburied to accompany his mother in death. Senenmut had the unmummified corpse sent to the embalming house for treatment, even though his father had died more than a decade before. There it was rewrapped in fine linen. When ready for reburial, it was placed in a simple painted coffin without any gilding. The body of his father had not previously been embalmed for burial, which suggested that neither Senenmut nor his family had access to extra income for elite burial extravagances at the time of Ramose’s death. But now cash was not a problem for Senenmut: he made sure that his mother and father could dwell next to each other for eternity, their bodies imperishable. See Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 86–97, and The Tombs of Senenmut: The Architecture and Decoration of Tombs 71 and 353 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 168–73.

  25. For the publication of the discovery of the tomb of Senenmut’s parents, Ramose and Hatnofer, see A. Lansing and W. Hayes, “The Egyptian Expedition 1935–1936,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 32 (January 1937, sec. 2): 5–39.

  26. See Dorman, Tombs of Senenmut.

  27. Betsy Bryan believes these architectural Osirian statues are inspired by similar statues of Hatshepsut’s father, Thutmose I, carved out of sandstone and installed at Karnak on the east bank of Thebes; see Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 241.

  28. Egyptologists are still debating how to understand and define the Temple of Millions of Years. Such a funerary temple is differentiated from state temples like Karnak and Luxor by the fact that it was usually built by one king for his own functional cult and was meant to link his being and royal rule with the gods Osiris, Re, and Amen. For more on temples in ancient Egypt, see B. E. Shafer, ed, Temples of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), and M. Ullmann, “König für die Ewigkeit: die Häuser der Millionen von Jahren,” Ägypten und Altes Testament 51 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002).

  29. This festival is discussed in Elaine Sullivan, “Processional Routes and Fest
ivals,” 2008, UCLA Digital Karnak, http://​dlib.​etc.​ucla.​edu/​projects/​Karnak/​assets/​media/​resources/​Processional​Routes​And​Festivals/​guide.​pdf.

  30. It is possible that Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri was begun for Thutmose II, as his Temple of Millions of Years, during the reign of her husband, but that she had it reassigned to herself. After all, she did not include a funerary temple of Thutmose II in her Red Chapel list, alongside the funerary temples of Thutmose I and III. See Zygmunt Wysocki, “The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahari: The Raising of the Structure in View of Architectural Studies,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 48 (1992): 234–54.

  31. For the idea that these temples acted as stages for festival activity, see Jadwiga Lipínska, “The Temple of Thutmose III at Deir el-Bahari,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 285–86.

  32. For more on the Opet festival, see Darnell, “Opet Festival,” UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. http://​escholarship.​org/​uc/​item/​4739r3fr.

  33. For this place, see R. A. Caminos and T. G. H. James, Gebel el Silsilah (London, 1963).

  34. Hatshepsut built temples or shrines at Elephantine, Kom Ombo, Hierakonpolis (el-Kab), Gebel el-Silsila, Meir (Cusae), Batn el-Baqqara, Speos Artemidos, Hermopolis, Armant, Nubia, and the Sinai, according to Cathleen A. Keller, “The Joint Reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 97. For a survey of Hatshepsut’s monuments, see Karl Leser’s webpage at http://​maat-​ka-​ra.​de/.