The 18th Dynasty of Egypt saw the return of native rulers to the throne and the peak of
Egyptian wealth and prosperity. From Thutmose I’s expansion of the Egyptian Empire to Thutmose IV’s
reign of ushering peace and peaking prosperity in Egypt, the dynasty produced some of the most
well-known Pharaohs and put Egypt’s importance back on the map. It was indeed, the golden age of
Egypt. However, there is a part of the history of this dynasty that they themselves tried to erase.
Why? Between Thutmose II and Thutmose III, there was another Pharaoh whose story was
almost lost to the sands of time. Welcome to Nutty History and today let’s find out
what happened in Ancient Egypt after the untimely death of Thutmose the Second.
Traditionally, the pharaonic line in Ancient Egypt passed from father to son, preferably the son of
the grand queen. All but one of the children of Thutmose I and his grand wife Ahmose died young.
Hatshepsut was the only daughter of Ahmose that survived to adulthood. While Thutmose
I was expanding his empire in Nubia and Syria, he made Hatshepsut his co-ruler of Egypt. She
also claimed that Thutmose I had named her as his successor before his death. But a woman becoming
the pharaoh of Egypt was highly unusual. In the history of Egypt during the dynastic period,
3000 to 332 B.C., there were only a handful of women who managed to rule as pharaohs,
rather than wielding power as the ‘great wife’ of a male king. Only Merneith and Sobeknefru, precede
Hatshepsut as female Pharaohs. In case a Pharaoh dies without a male heir from the grand queen,
it was quite the norm to pass the throne to the son of one of the pharaoh’s “secondary,” or
“harem,” wives. Thutmose II was the son of a secondary wife of Thutmose I and was crowned
the Pharaoh after Thutmose I died untimely from an arrow wound. In short order, young Thutmose
II was married to his half-sister Hatshepsut , making her Queen of Egypt at about age 12.
This was probably done to bolster the royal bloodlines of this “harem child”. But there
is also a possibility that Hatshepsut asked her half-brother to marry him to which he agreed.
Thutmose II’s reign was short but it was a decent run. He successfully put down Kush
rebellions in Nubia and the Levant and defeated a group of nomadic Bedouins but these campaigns
were specifically carried out by the King's generals, and not by Thutmose II himself.
Given that he was a minor for most of his ruling term, archeologists believe
that Hatshepsut was the real power behind the throne during Thutmose II’s rule. Historians
have generally described Thutmose II as frail and ineffectual, just the sort of person a supposedly
shrewish Hatshepsut could push around. Public monuments, however, depict a dutiful Hatshepsut
standing appropriately behind her husband. But while she bore her husband a daughter, Neferure,
Hatshepsut failed in the more important duty of producing a son. But, no matter how long he ruled,
his death was the most influential moment of his reign and perhaps the whole eighteenth dynasty.
He was only in his twenties, and most likely died of an incurable disease at the time. Given that
Hatshepsut had no son, the throne once again went to a “harem child”. Duly named Thutmose III, at
the time of his father’s death, he was pretty much an infant too young to rule. Monuments of the time
show Thutmose III, still a child, but portrayed conventionally as an adult king performing his
pharaonic duties. While Hatshepsut, dressed as queen, is depicted as standing demurely off to
one side. In reality, Hatshepsut continued her responsibilities as regent queen for three years.
But for some reason around this time, she gave up the pretense and became a Pharaoh in her own
right. This wasn’t technically an upset as she still considered Thutmose III as her co-ruler,
so more like a new arrangement between her and the baby who was still too young to think for himself.
With a new status for herself, Hatshepsut took on a full throne name meaning “foremost of
noblewomen,” and an odd fascination for being depicted as a male king.
You may call it Male Genital Envy if you like. By the seventh year of her regency, however,
it may have been much earlier, the formerly slim, graceful queen began appearing as a full-blown,
flail-and-crook-wielding king, with the broad, bare chest of a man and the pharaonic false beard.
Gay Robins observed that although for most of her reign Hatshepsut was depicted with the traditional
image of a male king, the names that she used as king were formed with grammatically feminine
participles, thus openly acknowledging her female status. You may be asking why the pretense then?
Egyptologists of older generations believe this was an attempt to be elevated to a godhood
status like her ancestors Amenhotep I and his mother. But while they were deified post mortem,
according to experts, Hatshepsut tried to get the status during her rule. On the flip side,
the recent generation of experts suggests that a political crisis such as a threat
from a competing branch of the royal family, obliged Hatshepsut to become pharaoh and project
a masculine image to strengthen her claim to the throne. Interestingly few historians also believe
that Hatshepsut may have had to declare herself king to protect the kingship for her stepson.
They point out that despite the rivalry for the throne between Thutmose III and Hatshepsut,
he wasn’t persecuted in any way by her. There were no restrictions imposed on him by Hatshepsut,
he wasn’t even in a house-arrest of any sort but was learning how to be a proficient soldier.
But then the question of transfer of power comes into play. Why didn’t Hatshepsut step down when
Thutmose III came of age? Some experts believe it wasn’t easy to step down because of how the status
of kingship and godhood came in a packaged deal in ancient Egypt. Once you took on the attributes
of kingship that was it. You were a god. It’s not queen for a day, it’s king for all time.
Hatshepsut probably knew her position was tenuous, both by virtue of her sex
and the unconventional way she had gained the throne, and thus appears to have done what canny
leaders have often done in times of crisis. She reinvented herself as a male ruler by appearance,
but that doesn’t mean she was cross-dressing. Even inscriptions on Hatshepsut’s statues
almost always contain some indication of her true gender. For example, a title such as “Daughter of
Re,” or feminine word endings, resulting in such grammatical conundrums as “His Majesty, Herself.”
Hatshepsut carried out her public works program across the empire. She inaugurated building
projects that far outstripped those of her predecessors including projects in newly
conquered Nubia, at sites such as Qasr Ibrim, Semna, Faras, and Buhen. In Egypt proper,
she launched several building projects. Hatshepsut also restored the damages caused by the previous
dynasty of Hyksos rulers. At the temple complex of Karnak, she erected a series of obelisks and built
a “Palace of Ma’at,” a rectangular structure that was composed of a series of small rooms
with a large central hall for the placement of the central bark. The walls of the palace were
covered with carved and brightly painted relief scenes of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. Perhaps
the most impressive architectural achievement of Hatshepsut’s builders is the temple at Deir
el-Bahari. Its ancient name was djeser-djeseru “the most sacred of sacred places,” with its three
colonnaded terraces leading to a sanctuary. As a work of art, architecture, and self-glorification,
Hatshepsut’s memorial was an enormous enterprise that must have involved an army of workers. It’s
almost certain, scholars agree, that Senenmut, the official overseer of works at Deir el-Bahri,
was the mastermind behind, if not the actual architect of, the temple. Her Voyage to Punt,
also known as “God’s Land” was a key foreign relations triumph during Hatshepsut’s reign.
Punt is believed to lie in northeastern Africa, somewhere in the area of Eritrea,
Ethiopia, and southern Sudan. Egyptians had made voyages to it for centuries by Hatshepsut’s time.
An ancient record of the voyage indicates that it was wildly successful. According to the document,
no Egyptian ruler had ever been so successful in Punt and Hatshepsut returned to Egypt with ships
overloaded with gifts like fragrant woods, heaps of myrrh-resin with fresh myrrh trees, ebony,
pure ivory, and green gold of Emu. Hatshepsut also followed the example of her 18th dynasty
predecessors and solidified her power with a short and successful military campaign to the south
against the Kingdom of Kush. Images and inscriptions from the tomb of Senenmut, Tiy
at Seheil, and the stela of Djehuty all record the campaign, with the latter two being quite explicit
that the campaign was led by Hatshepsut herself, unlike Thutmose II. Senenmut was definitely the
closest confidant and the favorite minister of Hatshepsut and this may have caused a lot of
gossip and speculation about the relationship between the two but most scholars concur that
there was no fire behind THAT smoke. Today, her rule is celebrated as a powerful female ruler
whose reign was extremely successful. But for the same reason there is a controversy that according
to Egyptian tradition, no woman should have been able to assume the full power of Pharaoh.
As Thutmose III came of age, Hatshepsut had settled into her rule as the Pharaoh
and asked him to take the role of the commander of the armies and Egyptologists have suggested
that he survived her reign by proving himself useful to her as a general and, more or less,
keeping out of her way. In 1457 B.C., Thutmose III led his armies to put down a rebellion from
Kadesh, a campaign possibly anticipated and commissioned by Hatshepsut, and afterward,
her name disappears from the historical record. It is believed that Thutmose III back-dated his
reign to the death of his father and Hatshepsut's accomplishments as pharaoh were ascribed to him.
Nobody knows when and how she died until recently. Egyptologist Zahi Hawass claimed to have located
her mummy in the Cairo museum's holdings in the year 2006. An examination of that mummy shows that
she died in her fifties from an abscess following a tooth extraction. The female mummy bore certain
physiological aspects that are consistent with CT scans of other royal family members. Thutmose III
went on to become a great Pharaoh known now as "the Napoleon of Ancient Egypt" for his
brilliant military victories. Later in his reign, he had all evidence of his stepmother erased from
monuments and all evidence of her reign destroyed. Senenmut and Neferu-Ra had both died long before
and there was no one at court, it seems, who had the power or inclination to change this policy.
Her existence only came to light fairly recently in history. The orientalist Jean-Francois
Champollion, most famous for deciphering the Rosetta Stone, found he could not reconcile
hieroglyphics indicating a female ruler with statuary obviously depicting a male. These
hieroglyphics were found in the inner chambers of Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri; all public
recognition of her had been erased. Thutmose III’s destruction of Hatshepsut’s monuments
has long been recognized as a conscientious, and very nearly successful, attempt to obliterate her
name and memory from history. But was it, as many early Egyptologists had assumed, an act
of revenge and hatred? Recent research into the matter has shed light and doubt over the theory
that the destruction of her existence began soon after her death. But it actually happened some
20 years later, toward the end of Thutmose III’s own long reign. While numerous theories abound,
most contemporary Egyptologists agree that the effort to delete Hatshepsut’s rule had something
to do with Thutmose III’s concerns about the succession of power after his death. Since the
Egyptians believed that erasing one's name from history hampered one's afterlife, it is believed
that whoever removed her from public knowledge did not wish her ill after death. As her name
was still preserved in more secluded areas. Tell us in the comments, was Hatshepsut a victim to
inherent sexism in the Ancient Egyptian System? And as always thanks for watching Nutty History.