The Woman Who Would Be King (28 page)

Next, the text includes a rare claim that links Hatshepsut’s success with the creator god himself.

Hatshepsut used all of her ingenuity to negotiate a difficult path as a female king. She was approaching thirty years of age, was ruler of the most powerful land in the Mediterranean and Africa, and shared the throne with a boy who would soon grow into a man. She had triumphantly received a successful expedition from Punt. The Nubian and Eastern Desert mines were creating a steady stream of gold at the expense of indigenous populations and society’s unwanted. Trade with Syria-Palestine was booming, with timber from Lebanon, wine from Crete, poppy products from Persia and beyond, and luxury goods brought in from places as far off as Babylon, Anatolia, and Afghanistan. The quarries were churning out stone for new statuary. All over Egypt, hammers and chisels rang out as they met stone; men were laboring in her name and building temples that would forever link Hatshepsut’s reign to Egypt’s current prosperity. In temples north and south, people saw new priests hired and old, neglected festivals reinstated. By all appearances, everything seemed in order and on track for Hatshepsut.

Except that it wasn’t. Her nephew and co-king Thutmose III was now thirteen or fourteen years of age and acquiring more knowledge
and confidence every day. Hatshepsut’s mother, Ahmes, may have died around this time, leaving her motherless and with no ties to her old life as princess and queen. And her daughter Nefrure would soon grow into a young woman ready to conceive an heir. Changes were coming. Hatshepsut would need to adapt to an extent that she had never imagined when she was scurrying around the royal nurseries as a small girl. Something would soon oblige her to take extraordinary steps with regard to how she depicted her feminine self.

Enclosed in the protective folds of his cloak in this innovative statue (one of many radically new statue forms that he invented), Senenmut embraces his young charge, the King’s Daughter Nefrure. Senenmut was assigned to act as Nefrure’s tutor, a coveted role he was more than happy to flaunt to his fellow officials. Senenmut knew he couldn’t show himself in Hatshepsut’s sacred presence, but including Nefrure’s image was the next best way to communicate his close relationship with the royal family. And showing Nefrure as a small child granted him the superior position.
© Trustees of the British Museum

Striking in its modernity, the multitiered facade of Hatshepsut’s Temple of Millions of Years was positioned majestically in the most dramatic location in western Thebes. It acted as a giant stage for great festivals of divine propitiation, wild celebration, and ritual solemnity. It also linked Hatshepsut’s kingship to accepted traditions, because she built it right next to the funerary temple of Mentuhotep II, the founder of Theban kingship in ancient Egypt hundreds of years before her reign.
Fly away with your imagination/©2010 Karolina Sus

Like her father before her, Hatshepsut showed herself as the god Osiris. Here on the facade of her Temple of Millions of Years, she depicted herself with the mummified body and crossed arms of the god of regeneration after death. The first skin color she chose for these statues was yellow ocher, the traditional color of a woman. As time went on, she opted for orange, an androgynous blend. Finally, she decided to fully masculinize her imagery, and the latest statues in the series betray the red ocher of masculinity.
©Michelle McMahon via Getty Images

Hatshepsut practically grew up in the sprawling temple complex dedicated to the god Amen, whom she called her father. When she became king, she dedicated a new chapel, built of deep red quartzite (the first time any king used this expensive stone to build a structure), to house the god’s sacred barque, and placed it immediately in front of the holy and exclusive sanctuary where the god’s statue dwelled. The walls detail her duties and achievements to the god, her coronation, and her ritual activity. The inscriptions record the oracles that marked her as the god’s choice to rule all of Egypt.
© Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic via Getty Images

Hatshepsut always took first position in her unorthodox coregency, even though she came to the throne second. Here, the female king and her coregent Thutmose III are in festival procession with the sacred barque of Amen. They are depicted as absolute equals—twins—communicating that both monarchs had the same access to the sacred spirit of kingship.
© Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic via Getty Images

This unfinished obelisk was likely produced during Hatshepsut’s dynasty, but after her reign. It was left in the quarry at Aswan after a deep crack developed along the length of the monolith. This is the largest obelisk the Egyptians ever attempted: 42 meters in length, about thirteen stories high. Hatshepsut’s obelisks, at over ten stories in height, came from the same quarries and were products of the same ancient Egyptian engineering techniques that few other civilizations have equaled. All Egyptian obelisks were sheathed (partially or fully) in precious metals.
© Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

Only one of Hatshepsut’s obelisks still stands at Amen’s temple in Karnak. Set up in celebration of her jubilee in year 16, it marked the moment when her kingship moved from carefully calculated audacity to full maturity. She had long since masculinized her images, and her co-king was now a partner in rule, leading Egypt’s armies on campaign. The lengthy text places her unusual kingship within the context of religious ideology, making sure to tell her people that everything she had achieved was the will of her father, the god Amen.
© Vanni Archive/Corbis