The Woman Who Would Be King (7 page)

While Ahmes was attempting to make herself a fertile field for her lord, Thutmose I could not be content with one wife. His palace was filled with his women and soon with his children. He visited Mutnofret’s bed as well, and all knew that any son of hers would bear powerful connections to the old royal family. Mutnofret was probably the highest-ranking wife among all the king’s ladies, except for Ahmes, the King’s Great Wife. There may have been a strange gestational competition between the two highborn ladies; Ahmes worried that Mutnofret’s child would be a son, thus creating a rivalry with her own offspring. Ahmes witnessed Mutnofret’s pregnancies, of course, watching week by week as life grew inside the woman. We cannot know how she reacted to the news that Mutnofret finally gave birth to a son, whom she named Thutmose after his father. Ahmes herself now had other children besides Hatshepsut; indeed, she probably bore the king two sons. She also bore a daughter named Neferubity.
³⁶
And besides, Mutnofret was far from the only competition for Ahmes. It is likely that many other wives in the king’s palace were also fostering his babies inside of them, and we can picture a whole palace of ladies in breeding. Births would have come hard and fast, a girl one month, a son the next, filling the ranks of the king’s children, most of whom left no trace in the surviving official documentation.

As a toddler, Hatshepsut would have grown up alongside the children of her father’s other wives. They were her playmates and siblings in the royal nursery. She probably saw her mother in the company of her ladies every day, but the time spent with Ahmes may have been formal and uncomfortable for her, or perhaps far too brief for a young girl in need of a loving mother’s attention. Hatshepsut doubtless encountered her father’s wife Mutnofret from time to time as well, perhaps in her own part of the palace, or when the lady visited her children in the nursery, but Mutnofret was not likely a daily companion for the young princess. Later memorials suggest that Hatshepsut had at least one close confidante in the royal nursery, her sister Neferubity.
³⁷

As for her father, around the time of Hatshepsut’s birth Thutmose I
was spending much of his time away from Egypt, on campaigns in Syria-Palestine and Nubia. When the king was home, his duties were to the gods’ upkeep, the law courts, and the servicing of the royal wives. He would have had little time (or inclination) to cuddle and console his many toddlers. It was probably a rare moment when the king felt compelled to visit the royal nursery, with its pandemonium of small children and babies, surrounded by the women who kept them safe, fed, educated, and under control. Thus it is doubtful that Hatshepsut and her father had an affectionate relationship when she was a young child. Getting to know children under the age of four, particularly little girls, must have been very low on the king’s priority list.

As the eldest child of the highest-ranking wife in the palace, Hatshepsut must have known she was special. And experience would prove to her that she was strong. Family members and tutors may have told her so, but the knowledge that she would manifest great power likely came from deep inside her, from her quiet moments in the temple, from talking to the god Amen or the goddess Mut. We can imagine her as a serious, quiet child who carefully watched everything that happened around her, attending to the attitudes and postures of her royal mother in court rituals, or to the words spoken by her father when he read the incantations on festival days.

In the palace apartments, she likely looked on as her father’s women vied for his attention by spending hours at their dressing tables fashioning fabulous wig and hair creations and smoothing their young bodies with perfumed oils and exotic scents. She would have noticed when some of these women swelled with pride and pregnancy as they made plans for a son, and seen the grief in their eyes after they had delivered a dead baby. She probably recognized the worried look of mothers whose infants were on the brink of death, about to be yanked from this world by some unnameable demon that could not be placated by even the most generous offerings.

Perhaps Hatshepsut caught a glimpse of the royal princes at their daily lessons in the House of Life—this boisterous, rowdy crowd of boys
who shoved and yelled and jostled as they sat cross-legged with pens in hand, until their teacher whacked them on their backs with a switch to keep them at their scribal practice. In any case, she did not belong with the princes and their pursuits of chariot racing and archery. She may have listened as the other princesses talked about new dresses with fancy braided fringes and jewelry, but perhaps she did not share their interests; these girls were not eager to learn about the world outside.

Most likely Hatshepsut worked quietly with her tutor, who would instruct her and only her on how to see shapes in the sacred script, how to find the names of the gods and of the kings in the ornate writings, and how to form her own sacred images with a pen on her wax tablet. She also helped the God’s Wife of Amen to ready rituals for the Great God in Karnak. She memorized the proper incantations and the correct gestures and movements. She yearned to please the King of the Gods and for him to find favor in her person. As the eldest child of Aakheperkare Thutmose, the Lord of the Two Lands, He of the Sedge and the Bee, and his Great Wife, Ahmes, she needed to be strong. Much was expected of her.

We have little direct knowledge of Hatshepsut’s perspective on her own importance and her place in the world, but she would have grown up in a number of palaces around Egypt, most of them easily reached via the plush, luxurious royal barges that traveled up and down the Nile. The most important members of the royal family needed to be mobile. They might want to attend an important religious festival in Memphis, or stay at the southern town of Elephantine while the king was on a campaign in Nubia and Kush, or spend time in the verdant green of the Fayum while the king was hunting hippos with his noblemen. The King’s Great Wife, Ahmes, and their children accompanied him on some of his travels, but most of Hatshepsut’s early life would have been spent in Thebes, in the southern Nile valley, sacred to the god Amen.

Hatshepsut’s immediate family included the most important people in all of Egypt if not the entire Mediterranean World. Her father was king—the link between the gods and the Egyptian people. Her mother was the king’s most highly placed wife and the most sacred vessel of his fertile abilities. Hatshepsut also had two highly placed brothers, perhaps her full brothers, princes of great importance in the dynastic succession—Wadjmose and Amenmose, one of whom was destined to be the next king of Egypt and thus Hatshepsut’s husband.
¹
Her sister Neferubity must have
been a close friend and ally.
²
Her wet nurse, Satre, was an intimate as well, because in the Egyptian mind, the bond of nursing had transformed Hatshepsut into Satre’s real blood daughter. Her half brother Thutmose was nothing more than a small prince in the arms of his highly ranked mother and second King’s Wife, Mutnofret. These were the essential players in Hatshepsut’s family, but we must remember that the quarters of the king’s women were also filled with Hatshepsut’s half brothers and sisters from lesser-ranked wives.

At Thebes, the king likely had more than one palace. On the east bank, a ceremonial palace just at the entrance to Karnak bore a name that signified its importance to the king as chief priest: “I Am Not Far from Him,” with “Him” referring to Amen, the Great God and lord of Thebes.
³
At this palace, Thutmose I wore the complex ceremonial attire and the tall crowns that demanded such attention and balance. Here he could meet with his chief priests and courtiers in preparation for important rituals and festivals, or to discuss temple administration. This palace was small but formal, in contrast to the sprawling and luxurious apartments occupied by his family.

The actual living residence was probably built far from the crowded and dusty town of Thebes, a good distance from its sewage, flies, and thousands of smoky cooking fires. The royal palace may have even stood on the west bank, across the river from the town of Thebes, where it was quieter and where animals and birds were abundant. The palace would have been close to the Nile and its cool waters, but not situated so low that it could be destroyed by the annual floods. Only columns, balustrades, door thresholds, and sometimes toilets were made from stone. Unbaked Nile mud bricks were used to build the other structural elements; they were the main source of building material for everyone in ancient Egypt—peasants and elites alike. In the king’s palace, the walls were whitewashed and brightly painted with scenes of the flora and fauna of Egypt. Its rooms were appointed with soft, elegant furnishings. And everywhere servants moved about the complex—waving massive ostrich fans from the corner of an outdoor lounge to provide a cool breeze for the royal inhabitants, standing at the ready to fetch a cool drink or nourishment, assisting the royal family with wigs, makeup, and adornments, emptying chamber pots, and servicing the baser human needs of the royal family.

The centerpiece of the palace was the audience hall and throne
room, where the king sat to discuss formal matters with his courtiers. Hatshepsut would have seen little of these areas as a young child, although she may have been expected to show herself at official court functions as she grew older. Most of her time was spent with her many brothers and sisters and the courtiers’ children in the royal nursery. The children were allowed to run around naked; they played with balls, hoops, and sticks, waded in their courtyard pool, and napped in the shade of date palms. Royal children’s heads were shaved, except for small locks of hair that dangled down on the side of the head. This near-shaven look was not only a marker of status but also a practical expedient against lice infestations.

As a small child, Hatshepsut was likely taught the discipline of standing still and stoic on a dais before a mass of people during formal engagements, and one wonders if she looked on with envy at the fidgeting and whining of other children. Hatshepsut must have always known the feeling of many eyes watching her, judging her bearing and expression. As the eldest King’s Daughter by the King’s Great Wife, Hatshepsut probably stood close to the king in important ceremonies and events in Thebes. She would have observed the king’s movements and heard his words in the throne room, learning by osmosis the effective way to rule. As her father—one of the most successful warrior-kings Egypt had ever seen—relentlessly planned for campaign after campaign abroad, she received firsthand training in imperial domination. During the second year of her father’s reign, after he waged a successful military operation in Nubia, the army returned to Thebes with the mutilated corpse of a conquered enemy hanging upside down from the prow of his boat. Hatshepsut may have been a witness when this body was transferred to Karnak’s outer walls for a gruesome triumphal display—a real foe to enhance the symbolic images of violence and smiting carved on the exteriors of Egyptian temples. But perhaps she did not yet understand what she was seeing. She was just a baby, around a year and a half in age, and she likely did not even remember the sight. Or maybe she just imagined that she had seen it, because this triumphant moment was spoken about so often that it was formally recorded during Thutmose I’s reign.
⁴

As a child, Hatshepsut probably saw the young black-skinned sons of the dead Nubian chieftain at her father’s court. Brought to Egypt for a kind of “reeducation,” they held their heads high in proud defiance of their new master, who had killed the rest of their family before their eyes. Thutmose
was following a clever and age-old tactic: abduct elite foreign children of subjugated lands, train them from a young age to love and respect their conquerors, and then return them to their own land as puppet rulers beholden to Egypt, brainwashed to obey the very king who had enslaved and murdered their families and people. For her part, Hatshepsut would have learned from infancy what constituted a successful foreign policy toward rebels in Nubia, Egypt’s closest neighbor: utter destruction, brutal executions, and absolutely no mercy.

By the age of ten, Hatshepsut may well have begun her travels abroad. An inscription from Hagr el-Merwa shows Thutmose I traveling up the Nile to Kurgus in modern-day Sudan with a large entourage, including his Great Wife, Ahmes, his crown prince, Amenmose, and a princess whose name is barely legible in the inscription, but which might read Hatshepsut.
⁵
Journeying with her father while on campaign in Upper Nubia would have given an impressionable and smart girl direct knowledge of how a subjugated enemy should be treated, how cheap the lives of these exploited people were, and how brutally and publicly rebels needed to be punished if Egypt was to continue to prosper by extracting gold and minerals from this southern land.

Hatshepsut may have witnessed public executions and other displays of violence against the Nubian people, as they constituted the main foe during her father’s reign. Indeed, there is no evidence that children were shielded from the violent realities of life, and it is likely that as King’s Daughter she was well placed to witness some of the most ruthless moments of her father’s imperialism. She would have been taught that violence was necessary, even righteous. Hatshepsut must have understood that Nubia’s riches were Egypt’s birthright, but only attained once its inhabitants had been cruelly subjugated; only the king could deliver Egypt from the dangers its enemies presented.

Hatshepsut’s formal education would have begun when she was four or five. It was unusual for an ancient Egyptian girl to be trained to read and write, but Hatshepsut was not a normal girl. She was meant to hold high religious office and to marry the next king of Egypt.