The Woman Who Would Be King (47 page)

4.
There is disagreement about whether Ahmes served as Thutmose II’s regent, but her placement on Egypt’s monuments does suggest that she, instead of the boy’s mother, was the highly placed woman who acted as regent over all official and administrative management. For a stela of Thutmose II with his wife Hatshepsut and his mother-in-law Ahmes, see the Berlin stela with accession number 15699 in D. Wildung, “Zwei Stelen aus Hatschepsuts Frühzeit,” in
Festschrift zum 150 jährigen Bestehen des Berliner ägyptischen Museums
(Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1974), 255–68, plate 34; also see Troy,
Patterns of Queenship
, 110. It is still not clear why Mutnofret did not act as regent for her young son, given her patrician origins. Was she politically disconnected even though she was a King’s Daughter?

5.
Some Egyptologists suggest that Ahmoside elements from the family of Amenhotep I were waiting in the wings to take over the kingship, although there is
no hard evidence for such an Ahmoside threat. See in particular Dimitri Laboury, “Royal Portrait and Ideology: Evolution and Signification of the Statuary of Thutmose III,” in Cline and O’Connor,
Thutmose III: A New Biography
, 266.

6.
The relative ages of Hatshepsut and her husband-brother Thutmose II are debated. If Ahmes married Thutmose I first, as expected for the highest-ranking royal wife, then Hatshepsut may have been born before Thutmose II. Mutnofret was a secondary wife, and thus likely married Thutmose I later. And because Thutmose II was positioned lower in the rankings for kingship, we can assume he was a younger brother of not only his older brothers Wadjmose and Amenmose, but also of his sister Hatshepsut. Of course, if Thutmose I married Ahmes before his accession (for which there is no evidence), none of this accounting can stand. Or, if Mutnofret was married to Thutmose I before his accession, as his primary wife before he became king (for which there is also no evidence), then Thutmose II may have been older than Hatshepsut. See Dorman, “The Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 59n7.

7.
The most well-known monument showing Thutmose II with his wife Hatshepsut and his mother-in-law Ahmes is a stela from ancient Thebes.

8.
For monuments from Hatshepsut’s time as queen and regent, see Gabolde,
Monuments décorés en bas relief
, and Troy,
Patterns of Queenship
, 108–14.

9.
For a digital reconstruction of this festival court, see the UCLA Digital Karnak website at
http://​dlib.​etc.​ucla.​edu/​projects/​Karnak/​feature/​Pylon​And​Festival​Court​Of​ThutmoseII
.

10.
Senenmut’s beginnings were humble. His father had no title of significance, and his mother had a rich burial only because by the time of her death Senenmut had attained a high enough status to bury his mother with costly goods. See Peter F. Dorman,
The Monuments of Senenmut: Problems in Historical Methodology
(New York: Kegan Paul International, 1988).

11.
The titles are Overseer of the King’s Great House and Overseer of the House of the King’s Great Wife; see ibid.

12.
Bryan demonstrates how these bureaucrats benefited from their positions in “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III.”

13.
Some Egyptologists suggest that he started his professional life in the army, an institution known to allow quick changes in social status, but there is little evidence for this conclusion. Theban Tomb 71 of Senenmut mentions gold armbands in association with battle or plunder, but this provides no evidence that he himself served in the army. Senenmut’s titles are administrative, and none of his plentiful monuments mention any affiliation with the army. See Dorman,
Monuments of Senenmut
, 7–13.

14.
The biography of Ahmose Pennekhbet, one of Hatshepsut’s later trusted officials, refers to Nefrure as “the eldest daughter,” implying that there was a younger daughter, as does a statue of Senenmut now in the Chicago Field Museum (Acc. No. 173800). See Sethe,
Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 1
, 34.

15.
These scenes are from the tower gate at the funerary temple of Ramses III
at Medinet Habu. See Oriental Institute Epigraphic Survey, ed.,
Medinet Habu
, vol. 7,
The Eastern High Gate
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), plates 630–54.

16.
The ancient Egyptian historian Manetho claims that Thutmose II ruled for thirteen years, but this assertion is not widely accepted. For a discussion of this longer reign, see Jürgen von Beckerath,
Chronologie des pharaonischen Ägypten: die Zeitbestimmung der ägyptischen Geschichte von der Vorzeit bis 332 v. Chr.
, Münchener Universitätsschriften; Philosophische Fakultät.; Münchner ägyptologische Studien, 46 (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1997), 201. A thirteen-year reign would add almost ten years to Hatshepsut’s ages put forth in this book. Thus she would have been around twenty-five when she served as regent for Thutmose III at the death of her husband, and then in her thirties at her own accession as king.

17.
The text is recorded on her Red Chapel barque shrine at Karnak. See N. Grimal, F. Burgos, and F. Larché,
La chapelle rouge: Le sanctuaire de barque d’Hatshepsout
(Paris: Centre Franco-Égyptien, 2006). For a translation of these texts, see Warburton,
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 226–33. The recorded information about the mechanics of the oracle is very vague, partly because we are dealing with a divinely inspired moment, and partly because the text was purposefully destroyed, leaving Egyptologists with only traces to reconstruct the full inscription. The festival was said to occur in year 2, but the reign of which king is not stated. If it was the second year of Thutmose I’s reign, Hatshepsut would, ostensibly, have been a mere infant then. Perhaps it was meant to occur in year 2 of Thutmose II, even though at this point Hatshepsut may have already been acting as God’s Wife of Amen and the King’s Great Wife.

18.
We do not know if this oracle really happened in a way that everyone in the audience could understand, or if this revelation was shared only with Hatshepsut, who then communicated it to her people. There is another oracle recorded on the Red Chapel, also ascribed to Hatshepsut, with another first-person text talking about another year 2 of an unidentified king, which took place at Luxor Temple, not Karnak, and referring to the god marking her as the next king. David Warburton treats these oracles together, and they are connected in the same narrative stream; see
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 226–33. The description of events, however, suggests two separate oracles at two different times—the first when she was marked as God’s Wife and the second when she was marked as king. Both are said to have happened in year 2 of an unspecified king, however, and it seems we are meant to see these events as happening in quick succession of one another.

19.
Pascal Vernus, “La grande mutation idéologique du Nouvel Empire,”
Bulletin de la Société d’égyptologie Genève
19 (1995): 69–95. In his book on Hatshepsut’s architecture, Warburton cites Vernus when he says, “The use of oracles to legitimate the inheritance of kingship by Hatshepsut and Thutmose III was an ideological innovation. It can also be related to a change in the understanding of
the authority behind kingship, as Hatshepsut appeals to Amun rather than Re” (
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 42). Warburton continues with the argument that in tying her legitimacy to Amen rather than her own “accomplishment of justice as the successor of Re,” as he puts it, Hatshepsut forever weakened Egyptian kingship, transforming it into an institution that was hereafter looking to the heavens for its justification rather than to its own kingly ideology of power on earth (ibid., 49).

1.
For the oracle marking Thutmose III as king, also known as the Texte de la Jeunesse, see Sethe,
Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 1
, 155–76, and Piotr Laskowski, “Monumental Architecture and the Royal Building Program of Thutmose III,” in Cline and O’Connor,
Thutmose III: A New Biography
, 184. For the idea that this oracle text may have Middle Kingdom origins, see Donald Redford, “The Northern Wars of Thutmose III,” in Cline and O’Connor,
Thutmose III: A New Biography
, 340. To take just one issue that is unclear in this oracle text: was Thutmose II actually present when the new king was chosen, as the text suggests but never overtly states, or was “the majesty” referred to in the text meant to be the god Amen? Perhaps “the majesty” is referred to obliquely because he wasn’t there in person. Perhaps the reigning king was ill, and a choice needed to be made about his heir. Or maybe he wasn’t there at all in body but only in spirit because he had just died, and the oracular choice was made in haste.

2.
This is, of course, assuming that Hatshepsut was indeed God’s Wife of Amen during the reign of her father, Thutmose I, for which there is no direct evidence, but for which the circumstances of dynastic rule—and having a God’s Wife related to the reigning king—make a strong case. The new Thutmoside dynasty would almost certainly have wanted a God’s Wife from its own family. See Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 231.

3.
Sethe,
Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 1
, 59–60. Although some Egyptologists argue that the biography of Ineni would have been written down long after the reign of Hatshepsut (see Laboury, “How and Why Did Hatshepsut Invent the Image of Her Royal Power?,” in Galán, Bryan, and Dorman,
Theban Symposium
), there is evidence that Ineni’s inscription finds its origins in the early reign of Thutmose III and thus is a remnant of the insecurity of that very moment in history when a baby was sitting on the throne of Egypt and a woman was making all the decisions. Bryan, for example, thinks that Ineni’s biography represents how Egyptians perceived Hatshepsut’s regency in its contemporary historical moment. See Betsy M. Bryan, “Hatshepsut and Cultic Revelries in the New Kingdom,” in Galán, Bryan, and Dorman,
Theban Symposium
.

4.
Marianne Schnittger entertains the possibility that it was Ahmes who acted as the regent for the baby king until her own demise, leaving the role to Hatshepsut. This discounts the evidence for Ahmes living into the reign of her
daughter Hatshepsut, however. See
Hatschepsut: Eine Frau als König von Ägypten
(Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2008), 26.

5.
Another one of Hatshepsut’s trusted officials—Ahmose Pennekhbet, whose daughter became one of Thutmose III’s most important wives—also recorded his autobiography on the walls of his tomb, listing all the kings under whom he had served: “I have accompanied the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Gods (deceased kings), under which I lived, on their campaigns in southern and northern foreign countries, at each place, to which they have gone, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt ‘Nebpehtyre’ (Ahmose I), the blessed one, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt ‘Djeserkare’ (Amenhotep I), the blessed one, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt ‘Aakheperkare’ (Thutmosis I), the blessed one, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt ‘Aakheperenre’ (Thutmosis II), the blessed one, down to this good God, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, ‘Menkheperre’ (Thutmosis III), given life for ever. The God’s Wife repeated favors for me, the Great King’s Wife ‘Maatkare’ (Hatshepsut), justified; I educated her eldest daughter, Neferure, justified, when she was a child at the breast.” The translation is based on Dorman,
Monuments of Senenmut
, 37–38.

Egyptologists have long used this text to prove that Hatshepsut was—just a few years after her death—posthumously demoted, no longer remembered as king but only as the God’s Wife and King’s Wife. However, new work on Ahmose Pennekhbet’s tomb suggests that this text is actually a copy from his original family tomb, which was decorated during Hatshepsut’s regency for Thutmose III. This new information indicates that Ahmose Pennekhbet was recording the rank of Hatshepsut as regent, from a time before she was officially king, rather than demoting the monarch in his tomb inscriptions after her death. For this new understanding, see Vivian W. Davies, “A View from Elkab: The Tomb and Statues of Ahmose-Pennekhbet,” in Galán, Bryan, and Dorman,
Theban Symposium
.

6.
See Boyo Ockinga, “Hatshepsut’s Appointment as Crown Prince and the Egyptian Background to Isaiah 9:5,” in
Egypt, Canaan and Israel: History, Imperialism, Ideology and Literature; Proceedings of a Conference at the University of Haifa, 3–7 May 2009
, ed. S. Bar, D. Kahn, and JJ Shirley (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

7.
Roth, “Models of Authority,” 11.

8.
Indeed, there is evidence that the elites of Thebes were very worried about the possible death of their infant king. Children were named Menkheperreseneb, meaning “May Menkheperre (Thutmose III) be healthy!” One such child would grow up to become High Priest of Amen during the sole reign of Thutmose III.

9.
Some Egyptologists suggest a longer reign for Thutmose II to alleviate the perceived problem of Hatshepsut’s age and inexperience. See Dorman, “Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 61. Donald Redford solves this problem by suggesting that Amenhotep I and Thutmose I had a coregency and arguing that toward the end of the reign of Amenhotep I, the king chose one of his generals, Thutmose, to succeed him and that he married him off to Ahmes and elevated him to the level of
king. See Donald B. Redford,
History and Chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt: Seven Studies
(New York: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 73. However, Murnane includes no evidence of a coregency for these kings. See William J. Murnane,
Ancient Egyptian Coregencies
(Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1977), 115.

10.
The only surviving statue of Thutmose III’s mother, Isis, is in the Cairo Museum (JdÉ 37417; CG 42072).