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Queen Hatshepsut: The Feminine Kingdom

Hatshepsut promoted peace, prosperity and great art.

By Vibhuti Patel

Newsweek International

April 10-17, 2006 issue - A thousand years after the Pyramids were built, Queen Hatshepsut, widow and half sister of King Thutmose II, ascended Egypt's throne when the latter died prematurely in 1473 B.C. As regent for her infant nephew and stepson, Thutmose III, she was not the first woman to rule Egypt. But, for reasons that remain unknown, a few years into her regency, Hatshepsut discarded the title "queen" and became "king." She claimed double legitimacy—as King Thutmose I's eldest daughter and by virtue of her mythic self-propagated descent from the great god Amun. Because Egyptian kings were near-divine and crowned for life, Hatshepsut could not then abdicate in favor of her stepson. She became his senior co-ruler and controlled the Two Kingdoms, Upper and Lower Egypt, until her death 20 years later. Her remarkable and successful reign is now being commemorated at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in the show "Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh" (through July 9).

Hatshepsut's rule was peaceful, except for an early military expedition against invaders that she herself led. It was also prosperous—under her, Egypt traded with its neighbors—and has been compared to that of England's Queen Elizabeth I and Russia's Catherine the Great. Like them, she became a patron of art and architecture: by encouraging the creation of some of Egypt's finest sculptures, monumental statues, magnificent temples and stunning jewelry, she launched an artistic renaissance that would influence ancient Egyptian design and culture for centuries.

Among the many works on display at the Met are graceful statues of Hatshepsut as pharaoh, clad in the scarf and cobra symbolic of kingship, the short kilt worn by Egyptian men and the requisite false beard. Externals aside, there is no attempt to hide the pharaoh's gender: the body is slim, the face feminine, the eyes soft. The inscriptions refer to "king," but the linguistic references are feminine. Also on exhibit are sphinxes topped with the royal head that decorated her famous colonnaded temple Djeser-Djeseru in the Valley of the Kings; they are slender and feline, carved from various kinds of stone. One entire gallery is dedicated to the numerous—and innovative—statues of Senenmut, the royal tutor who cared for Hatshepsut's daughter and who commissioned much of the art and architecture that defined Hatshepsut's reign.

Although there were many allusions to a powerful female pharaoh, her name remained missing for centuries from Egyptian history. That's because 20 years after her death, Thutmose III ordered an inexplicable attack on Hatshepsut's legacy. Everything that identified her as pharaoh was demolished: the cartouches bearing her name were erased from sculptures, those statues of her bearing kingly regalia were broken, and only those of her as queen were spared. The shattered fragments were tossed into a hole outside her famous temple, where they were found, excellently preserved, by the Metropolitan Museum's excavators nearly 100 years ago. Reconstructed now, they puzzle scholars who ponder the mystery of her erasure—even as they bring her back to vivid life.

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