Hatshepsut: Achievements and Facts

By Eman Abdallah Kamel

Eman is a writer and engineer. She is interested in writing about history.

Hatshepsut was one of the most successful rulers of ancient Egypt. This article discusses Hatshepsut’s achievements, birth, marriage, reign, and facts.

Hatshepsut

Hatshepsut was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1479–1458 BCE) of ancient Egypt. She became a pharaoh after rising from princess to queen. Her ascension to the throne, despite the prevailing ideals of the time, was unacceptable.

Egyptologists consider her one of the most successful pharaohs, male or female, of her time, and she ruled longer than any other woman of the original Egyptian dynasty.

Hatshepsut rebuilt international trade relations, bringing immense wealth to Egypt. This wealth enabled her to undertake projects that elevated ancient Egyptian architecture to unprecedented heights.

Queen Hatshepsut ruled for 21 years. Her reign was characterized by peace and economic prosperity.

Timeline of the 18th Dynasty. Image source: Wikimedia.org

Birth, Family, and Marriage

Hatshepsut was born in 1507 BC, the eldest daughter of King Thutmose I, the third ruler of the 18th Dynasty, and Queen Ahmose.

Hatshepsut had a sister, Princess Neterukheb, and two brothers who both died young. King Ahmose I, who liberated Egypt from the Hyksos, is the great-grandfather of Hatshepsut and the founder of the 18th dynasty.

Hatshepsut married Thutmose II, the son of Tuthmose I, when she was almost twelve years old. She gave him a single daughter, Princess Neferure, but Thutmose II’s son, Thutmose III, was born to a secondary wife named Isis.

The Rise of Hatshepsut to Power

After her father’s death, Hatshepsut became queen of Egypt when she married Thutmose II, who ruled Egypt from 1493 BC to 1479 BC. Thutmose III, Hatshepsut’s stepson, inherited the throne following Tuthmosis II’s death. He was a kid, and Hatshepsut was acting as regent for him, but less than seven years later, Hatshepsut assumed the title of pharaoh and became the ruler of Egypt with Thutmose III.

A map of the supposed location of Punt and trade routes from Egypt to Punt via rivers, valleys, and the sea. Image source: Wikimedia.org

Achievements

Hatshepsut reopened mines and quarries, especially the copper mines in the Sinai Peninsula that had been shut down during Egypt’s Hyksos occupation.
Trade with Egypt’s neighbors, which had been declining, particularly under Thutmose II’s rule, also flourished.
Queen Hatshepsut reused a canal that connected the Nile to the Red Sea, enabling her to expand trade.
She took care of the Egyptian commercial fleet and established large ships for internal transport as well as trade exchange missions, such as

Punt Land Mission: Hatshepsut sent a commercial mission to Punt Land (Somalia) on large ships loaded with gifts and Egyptian goods, such as papyrus and linen. The ships were then reloaded with predators, timber, incense, ebony, ivory, leather, and precious stones. Queen Hatshepsut recorded the news of this mission on the walls of the Deir el-Bahari temple on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor.

Byblos Mission: To bring the wood, she also dispatched a mission to Byblos, Lebanon.

Obelisk of Hatshepsut. Image source: Nationalgeographic.com

Hatshepsut commissioned the construction of two massive granite obelisks, each weighing approximately 35 tons, which were the tallest in the world at the time, at the entrance to the Karnak Temple. One still stands, the tallest ancient obelisk on Earth. The other broke in two and collapsed.
Pakhet Temple is an underground shrine built by Hatshepsut at Beni Hasan in Minya Governorate. Greeks admired this temple and called it the Speos Artemidos during the Ptolemaic occupation of ancient Egypt. This temple contains an architrave with a long, detailed text bearing Hatshepsut’s denunciation of the Hyksos, translated by James B. Allen. Hatshepsut has also repaired numerous temples in this region that the Hyksos invaders had destroyed.

Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut Image source: Flickr.com

The Mortuary Temple (Djeser Djeseru) of Queen Hatshepsut is one of the most dramatic places in the world. Designed by the architect of the queen, Senenmut, he placed it at a site on the West Bank of the Nile River near the entrance of the Valley of the Kings, Luxor. This funerary temple is very similar to the ancient classical Greek architecture, but Hatshepsut’s temple was built about 1,000 years earlier. The mortuary temple consists of three floors. The first floor contains pictures of bird hunting and the transfer of obelisks from Aswan to the temple. The second is decorated with drawings depicting the famous commercial trip to Punt Land. The third floor is the courtyard of ceremonies. It took about 15 years to build and complete this temple.

Did you know?

Hatshepsut used massive stones transported from Aswan’s granite quarries to build temples.

Hatshepsut and Other Female Egyptian Rulers

It was unusual for a woman to rule Egypt, but it happened a few times. Hatshepsut, who was preceded by Merneith of the first dynasty, was buried with the full honor of a pharaoh and probably ruled in her own right. Nimaathap of the third dynasty may be the widow of Khasekhamoy; she acted as regent of her son, Djoser, and may have prevailed as a pharaoh in her own right. Queen Supkinifro of the twelfth dynasty assumed official power as ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt three centuries before Hatshepsut. Ahhotep I, who was praised as a warrior queen, may have been a trustee between the reigns of her sons, Kamus and Ahmus I, at the end of the seventeenth dynasty and the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty.

Another prominent example of a woman ruler is Cleopatra VII, during the Ptolemaic period in Egypt. She was the last pharaoh and the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Both Hatshepsut and Cleopatra focused on expanding Egypt’s trade and ruled for extended periods, but each had her own distinct style. For example, Hatshepsut took off women’s clothes, dressed in men’s clothes, tied a gold beard to her chin, and tried to hide the fact that she was a woman. Cleopatra, on the other hand, adorned herself in women’s clothing of all the styles of the time and enjoyed the privileges of being a queen.

In general, when comparing Hatshepsut with other female pharaohs, Hatshepsut’s reign was longer, more prosperous, and more peaceful.

Isometric images, plan images, and elevation images of KV20—taken from a 3D model. Image source: Wikimedia.org

Death and Burial

Hatshepsut died in 1457 BC, in the twenty-second year of her reign, as recorded on a stela found in Armant.

The ancient Egyptian historian Manetho estimated her reign to have lasted 21 years and nine months. Hatshepsut’s tomb is located in the Valley of the Kings and is designated KV20. It is believed that KV20 was the first royal tomb built in the valley. This tomb was originally the burial place of Thutmose I, who was later moved to KV38. Hatshepsut expanded KV20 to accommodate herself and her father.

Tomb 20 is located in the eastern part of the valley, near tombs 19, 43, and 60. Its design is unique, consisting of five curved passages and a descending passage, two of which terminate in chambers. These passages curve clockwise from east to southwest. At the bottom of this descending passage is a series of chambers connected to another passage. The burial chamber is a three-pillared room, and at its northern end are three small side chambers. The tomb is 210 meters long.

The objects found in the KV20 were from the burial chamber and the corridor leading to it. The artifacts included stone vases with the names of Ahmose-Nefertari, Tuthmosis I, and Hatshepsut. Two quartzite coffins were engraved for Tuthmose I and Hatshepsut (as pharaoh), and the canopic box of Hatshepsut (as pharaoh). Also, limestone blocks bearing funerary text were found, along with several parts of the usual funerary furnishings.

Mummy

In 1881 AD, a wooden canopic box decorated with an ivory handle and engraved with the name of Hatshepsut, containing a liver, part of the intestines, and a molar tooth, was found in the royal mummy cache in DB320.
Around 1903, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered tomb KV60 in the Valley of the Kings, which contained two mummies, one identified as Hatshepsut’s wet nurse and the other unidentified. The tomb was rediscovered in 1906 by English Egyptologist Edward Ayrton, who transferred the mummy of Hatshepsut’s wet nurse to the Egyptian Museum, leaving the mummy of the unidentified woman alone.
According to guardians.net, in 2007, Dr. Zahi Hawass transferred the unidentified mummy from the tomb to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo for examination. This mummy was missing a molar tooth, and the space in the jaw was an exact match to Hatshepsut’s molar found in the canopic box DB320.
After the mummy was examined, it was discovered that Queen Hatshepsut had diabetes, arthritis, and possibly bone cancer when she died at the age of fifty. Some scientists attributed her sickness with bone cancer to a skin lotion found in the queen’s possession containing benzo(a)pyrene, a hazardous aromatic hydrocarbon consisting of several carbon rings. Benzo(a)pyrene is considered one of the most dangerous carcinogenic substances. For example, this substance is present in cigarettes and causes lung cancer.

If you imagine that the queen has a chronic skin disease and that she has found a short-term improvement with the ointment, she may have put herself at great risk over the years.

Helmut Weidenfeld from the Institute of Pharmacy at the University of Bonn.

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