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

by Kara Cooney

  16. Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 242.

  17. About forty-two Theban tombs were commissioned by officials of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, a virtual explosion of private tomb building. In all the previous reigns of the Eighteenth Dynasty combined, only ten tombs were completed in Thebes. See Kozloff, “Artistic Production of the Reign of Thutmose III,” 302.

  18. For remarks on innovation during the reign of Hatshepsut, see Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 109.

  19. For more discussion of the co-option of elites during the reign of Hatshepsut, see Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 262, and Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion, 261–65.

  20. Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 242.

  21. Kozloff, “Artistic Production of the Reign of Thutmose III,” 310.

  22. Hapuseneb probably predeceased Hatshepsut, because she was the only king mentioned in his tomb. Even late in his life, he decided not to include any text or image of Thutmose III. The next First High Priest of Amen was Menkheperreseneb, obviously from a family of Thutmose III supporters, given his name means “Menkheperre (Thutmose III) is healthy!” Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 107–8.

  23. Senenmut was given the honor of having his name and image displayed at Deir el-Bahri dozens of times, including in the Punt reliefs and in the images hidden behind the door leaves on the upper terrace and in the Hathor chapel. Besides his many statues commissioned to stand along the processional routes at Karnak, Senenmut also had himself represented at the Mut temple gateway, which was later removed in the same manner as his hidden images at Deir el-Bahri. He also had images and statues set up at Luxor Temple. See Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut.

  24. Useramen’s tomb only mentions Thutmose III, and he served well into Thutmose III’s reign, suggesting that this honor may have been granted by Thutmose III, albeit following Hatshepsut’s lead with other officials. See Ziobek, E., “Denkmäler des Verziers User-Amen.”

  25. However, some early New Kingdom monarchs did place their burial chambers a short distance away from their actual pyramids. The burial chamber of Ahmose I (first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty) in his pyramid at Abydos was over a kilometer away from his temple. Amenhotep I, the second king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, may have been the first one to place his burial chamber in a remote valley on the other side of a cliff, away from his funerary temple, but until his tomb is firmly identified, we cannot say for sure.

  26. There is a great deal of disagreement about where Thutmose I was buried first and if KV 38 is his original tomb or not. Roehrig thinks KV 38 was indeed commissioned by the early Eighteenth Dynasty king. She also argues that KV 20 was originally made for Thutmose II but taken over by Hatshepsut, that KV 34 was constructed for Thutmose III, and that Hatshepsut added two side chambers to KV 20, with the intention to have herself buried with both her husband, Thutmose II, and her father, Thutmose I. Roehrig contends that the Amduat in her tomb was never completed. See Roehrig, “Two Tombs of Hatshepsut,” and John Romer, “The Tomb of Tuthmosis III,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 31 (1975). For a counterargument, see Schnittger, Hatschepsut, 59–60.

  27. Hatshepsut’s Amduat text was not carved into the live rock but instead onto movable blocks. It has recently been demonstrated by Mauric-Barberio that the Amduat blocks in the tomb of Thutmose I (KV 38) and those in the tomb of Hatshepsut (KV 20) match and that all probably belong to Hatshepsut’s reign. Thus perhaps we should assign the innovation of including the Amduat in the royal tomb to Hatshepsut instead of her father; he is the one who can be credited with the radical decision to move the royal burial to the Valley of the Kings. F. Mauric-Barberio, “Le premier exemplaire du Livre de l’Amdouat,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale au Caire 101 (2001): 315–50. Warburton suggests that agents of Thutmose III moved some but not all of Hatshepsut’s Amduat blocks to the tomb of Thutmose I (KV 38) (Architecture, Power, and Religion, 205). Tyldesley suggests that the tomb was unfinished and that the blocks were lying on the floor abandoned by the builders (Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, 123).

  28. Peter Der Manuelian and Christian E. Loeben, “New Light on the Recarved Sarcophagus of Hatshepsut and Thutmose I in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 79 (1993): 121–55.

  29. For a description of the valley temple excavations, see Earl of Carnarvon and H. Carter, Five Years’ Explorations at Thebes: A Record of the Work Done 1907–1911 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912).

  30. From the Second Hour of the Amduat, characterized by mourning and great preparation after the sun god has settled into the underworld. The translation is based on David Warburton and Erik Hornung, The Egyptian Amduat: The Book of the Hidden Chamber (Zurich: Living Human Heritage, 2007), 52–57.

  31. For information about ancient Egyptian funerary rituals, see Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005).

  32. The later tomb of Tutankhamun provides the only comparison for Hatshepsut’s possible funerary goods. See Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). For a complete record of the excavation notes and photographs, see the Griffith Institute’s website on Tutankhamun’s tomb at http://​www.​griffith.​ox.​ac.​uk/​discoveringTut/.

  33. The Book of Hours was often preserved on papyrus, and it was meant to give the dead power over circumstances in the netherworld. The text is broken up into hours, as in the Amduat. For more on this text, see Raymond O. Faulkner, “An Ancient Egyptian ‘Book of Hours,’ ” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 40 (1954): 34–39.

  34. Chapter 148 of the Book of the Dead is the “book for making the transfigured spirit excellent in the heart of Re, causing him to have power before Atum, magnifying him before the foremost of the West, enabling him to go out before the Ennead” and includes the Seven Celestial Cows (the Pleiades or Seven Sisters constellation that moved in the night sky and provided a means of counting the night hours). Also in Hatshepsut’s chapel are scenes of the Iunmutef priest—a figure who wears a leopard skin and the sidelock of youth, representative of the eldest son and heir—performing cult offerings and funerary ritual. The chapel walls preserve excerpts from the Pyramid Texts, the oldest known funerary texts from ancient Egypt, which provided protection and necessities to the dead in the next life. For all of these texts, see Marcelle Werbrouck, Le temple d’Hatshepsout à Deir el Bahari (Bruxelles: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1949).

  35. There is no evidence for it, but Warburton suggests an abdication of power before her actual death: “She certainly did not relinquish power voluntarily at this point, but it is not clear that she died either. However, it should not be forgotten that with the death of her daughter, the possibility of a female dynasty was gone—and there is no reason to believe that her daughter died naturally. It is thus also possible that Hatshepsut did in fact die at this point—but not necessarily accidentally or of natural causes” (Architecture, Power, and Religion, 55–56n213).

  36. Hawass, “Quest for Hatshepsut.” This mummy belonged to an old, very fat, diabetic woman whose teeth were so worn down that her age was estimated at between forty-six and sixty years. Many other circumstantial signs do not support the identification of KV 60A as Hatshepsut’s mummy; for example, not even the brain was removed during embalming. There is no reason to suggest that Hatshepsut received shoddy embalming just because her gender did not fit the office of kingship. If the Egyptians had wanted to harm her after death, they would have done a much more thorough job than poor embalming. Remnants of her burial suggest a traditional and high-cost affair. Furthermore, the estimated age at death of the KV 60A mummy is much older than historical documents allow for Hatshepsut.

  37. Edouard Naville and Howard Carter, The Tomb of Haâtshopsîtû (London: A. Constable,
1906). Her anthropoid wooden coffin was also found in KV 4, the tomb of Ramses XI, which was used as a workshop when the royal mummies were being stripped of valuables and moved, indicating that her body remained untouched until the end of the New Kingdom. Other funerary objects of hers were found in the royal cache at Deir el-Bahri (Theban Tomb 320), including a canopic chest, a senet board, and the remains of a chair. For the movement of the royal mummies in the later New Kingdom, see Nicholas Reeves, Valley of the Kings: The Decline of a Royal Necropolis (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990).

  38. For more on the shroud of Thutmose III, see Troy, “Religion and Cult,” 154.

  39. S. W. Cross, “The Hydrology of the Valley of the Kings,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 94 (2008): 303–12.

  40. But see Nicholas Reeves and Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Treasures of Egypt’s Greatest Pharaoh’s. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 94–95. Many of Hatshepsut’s funerary objects were preserved, which suggests that her mummy is also preserved to us—we just haven’t definitively identified it.

  41. Akhenaten’s mummy may have been destroyed after the failure of his radical religious changes. Or maybe it was moved back to Thebes as a corrective. For more on the aftermath of Akhenaten’s reign, see Dodson, Amarna Sunset.

  42. Thutmose I’s tomb was likely also looted in antiquity; his coffin was reused by the priest-king Panedjem I in the Theban royal cache. But since the identification of the mummy of Thutmose I has recently been disproved, Hatshepsut’s father is still out there somewhere, waiting for discovery. The mummy of her mother, Ahmes, is still missing, too, and maybe Hatshepsut’s mummy is with them.

  Chapter Nine: The King Is Dead; Long Live the King

  1. The story of this campaign comes from Thutmose III’s annals, inscribed in the heart of Karnak Temple. I have adapted it from Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2:29–35.

  2. The Great Green Sea is how the Egyptians referred to the Mediterranean Sea.

  3. Redford, “Northern Wars of Thutmose III,” 330–31.

  4. A stela from Armant indicates that Thutmose III led at least two campaigns in Syria-Palestine during the coregency with Hatshepsut. According to O’Connor, his victories imply extensive military campaign experience (“Thutmose III: An Enigmatic Pharaoh,” 28).

  5. Because ancient armies were self-sufficient, living off the land with spoils taken from the conquered, campaigns usually took place in late spring and summer. See Redford, “Northern Wars of Thutmose III,” 328–29.

  6. P. T. Nicholson and J. A. Henderson, “Glass,” in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, ed. P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  7. Laboury, “Royal Portrait and Ideology,” 271.

  8. Laboury argues that “this policy—personal assertion, deep respect for the predecessors and great devotion toward Amun, the god who gives rightful kingship—suggest(s) that the ruler was in need of legitimation after a long partition of his power with Hatshepsut, since they precisely constitute ways to justify claims to the throne” (ibid., 271).

  9. See Christian E. Loeben, Beobachtungen zu Kontext und Funktion königlicher Statuen im Amun-Tempel von Karnak (Leipzig: Wodtke und Stegbauer, 2001). Also see the page on the colossal statues at the eighth pylon on Leser, “Maat-ka-Ra Hatshepsut,” website at http://​maat-​ka-​ra.​de/.

  10. Blyth, Karnak, 68–77.

  11. The Akhmenu temple was begun soon after Thutmose’s sole reign started. In “Royal Portrait and Ideology,” 268–70, Laboury argues that the statues there are very similar to late portraits of Hatshepsut, but with slight differences, including a more masculine body, a deeper depression under the eye, lower cheekbones, a nose with a rounded point, and a chin with a different shape from the side. Laboury sees the Akhmenu statues of Thutmose III, especially CG 42053, as the real face of Thutmose III and most similar to how the young monarch appeared.

  12. Two-dimensional images of sixty-two seated statues are shown, and it is possible that a real, three-dimensional statue group was present in Thutmose I’s hypostyle hall between the fourth and fifth pylons, where Thutmose III would have made offerings to his ancestor kings as a respectful heir should. The temple would also have kept portable versions of these statues to bring into the Akhmenu on feast days. See O’Connor, “Thutmose III: An Enigmatic Pharaoh,” 19–20, and Redford, “Northern Wars of Thutmose III,” 341.

  13. For the names preserved, see the website of Peter Lundström, “Karnak King List,” http://​xorpid.​com/​karnak-​king-​list. For a formal publication of the list, see A. C. Prisse d’Avennes, Monuments égyptiens (Paris, 1847), plate 1.

  14. For the timing of the Red Chapel dismantling and subsequent defacing, see Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut.

  15. The granite sanctuary of Thutmose III exists only in fragments, but Philip Arrhidaeus’s sanctuary is a copy in dimension and subject matter. See Blyth, Karnak, 78–83.

  16. Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 1, 155–76. For more on this important text, see Anthony Spalinger, “Drama in History: Exemplars from Mid Dynasty XVIII,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 24 (1997): 269–300. Spalinger argues that the stress on divine nomination indicates some weakness to the claim to the throne by Thutmose III. Those behind the decision to crown Thutmose III thus used an older Middle Kingdom text legitimizing the young Senwosret I (preserved on the Berlin Leather Roll, Berlin 3029, a leather sheet with a copy of Senwosret I’s building program, probably copied from one of his own temples, either in the Middle Kingdom or during the early Eighteenth Dynasty) as a source for Thutmose’s innovative oracle text. Senwosret I was also said to be chosen by the gods as king and was likewise called a puppy, in reference to his youth. Spalinger maintains that in the reign of Thutmose III we see a new and real self-consciousness of kingship and succession that was not there before: only the king-to-be can understand the gods’ revelation and what it means, and the king had to be chosen by the gods, rather than being god incarnate, himself. For further discussion, see also Laskowski, “Monumental Architecture and the Royal Building Program of Thutmose III,” 183–237, 219–20.

  17. For example, Laboury argues that the building program of Thutmose III “reveals a certain animosity between the former coregents” (“Royal Portrait and Ideology,” 271).

  18. The dating of the death of Nefrure to a time before year 16 is based entirely, if indirectly, on an ostracon from Senenmut’s tomb at Deir el-Bahri, but scholars now recognize evidence that Nefrure lived beyond her mother. See Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 77–78. Some evidence indicates that Nefrure lived many years past regnal year 16 and perhaps even past her mother’s death in year 22: (1) a previously mentioned stela from the Ptah temple at Karnak (CG 34013) showing Thutmose III with the God’s Wife of Amen Nefrure recut as Satiah; (2) a stela from the funerary temple of Thutmose III (CG 34105) showing the king offering to Amen with his queen, likely originally Nefrure but recut as Thutmose III’s mother, Isis, who is called Great King’s Wife and Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt. The tomb of Nefrure was probably located at Wadi Sikkat Taka ez-Zeida, where Hatshepsut’s tomb had been prepared when she was queen, because Nefrure’s name is carved into one of the boulders at the site. Howard Carter, “A Tomb Prepared for Queen Hatshepsuit and Other Recent Discoveries at Thebes,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 4, no. 2/3 (1917): 107–18.

  19. Given the reoccurring problems of succession, kings increased their harem throughout the New Kingdom. See Bryan, “In Women Good and Bad Fortune Are on Earth,” 38–39.

  20. Robins wonders what the king did with all these women, particularly the dozens of women who accompanied the foreign princesses as part of their entourage. She suspects that many of the wives living at the palace never saw the king; they were kept busy producing high-quality goods like fine linen cloth. In many ways, the harem was actually a workshop for high-status goods. See Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt, 39–41, and Roth, “Harem,” UCLA
Encyclopedia of Egyptology.

  21. O’Connor, “Thutmose III: An Enigmatic Pharaoh,” 27.

  22. Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 248.

  23. An outer wall of Thutmose III’s Akhmenu at Karnak bears an inscription dating to year 23 that records the installation of the eldest King’s Son, Amenemhat, as Overseer of Cattle. There is no other evidence of this prince’s existence. Dorman suggests Nefrure was alive in year 23 as God’s Wife of Amen and King’s Great Wife, and was likely the mother of this eldest King’s Son. See Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 78–79.

  24. See Dodson and Hilton, Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, 131–32.

  25. Most royal children left no record of their existence, but for evidence of Eighteenth Dynasty princesses recorded on Twenty-First Dynasty mummy labels after their removal from their original tombs and subsequent reburial, see A. Dodson and J. J. Janssen, “A Theban Tomb and Its Tenants,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 75 (1989): 125–38.

  26. Laboury, “Royal Portrait and Ideology,” 261.

  27. Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 173–74.

  28. Ibid., 137, 177–78. The evidence that Senenmut lived into the sole reign of Thutmose III is based on a number of his monuments that can be dated after the death of Hatshepsut. One statue found by a Polish expedition in situ at Djeser Akhet (Cairo Museum statue CG 42117) names only Nefrure and Thutmose III. We also have evidence of another Chief Steward of Amen, a man named Roau, who was a contemporary of Senenmut, and it seems likely that Senenmut lost this influential position to this man. On one of his Djeser Akhet statues, the inscription states that the original location was a temple called Kha Akhet rather than Djeser Akhet, indicating that the statue was not originally placed in Thutmose III’s temple but somewhere else. No matter what, Senenmut did not die in year 18 or 19, as previously assumed. Also see Keller’s discussion of Senenmut’s statue with a Hathor emblem in Roehrig’s Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 126–27.