Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (18 page)

The young dowager queen was called upon to act as regent on behalf of her even younger stepson. As we have already seen, this in itself was not an unusual situation, and it was accepted Egyptian practice that a widowed queen should rule for her minor son. Indeed, there had already been two highly successful 18th Dynasty regencies: Queen Ahhotep had acted as regent for King Ahmose, and later Ahmose Nefertari had ruled on behalf of her son Amenhotep I. No one, therefore, could have objected to Hatchepsut being appointed regent on the grounds of her sex and, as the daughter, sister and wife of a king, there was unlikely to be any member of the royal family more qualified to undertake the role. However, in one respect the situation was unprecedented: Hatchepsut was being called upon to act as regent for a boy who was not her son. To Naville, a fervent Hatchepsut supporter, this was clearly an intolerable situation:

It is the story of Sarah and Hagar as enacted in a royal family; but the queen was less happy than the Sarah of Scripture, for she was obliged to install Ishmael in the heritage of Abraham, to associate him with herself, and to give him her own daughter in marriage.
³⁶

Whatever her private feelings, Hatchepsut accepted her new role with good grace. Throughout the first couple of years of her stepson's rule she acted as a model queen regent, claiming only those titles to which she was entitled as the daughter and widow of a king and allowing herself to be depicted standing behind the new king in traditional queenly fashion. Her subordinate status at this time is confirmed by inscriptions at the Semna temple in Nubia, dated to Tuthmosis III Year 2, where Hatchepsut plays a very minor role in both the texts and the accompanying carved reliefs. Here, Tuthmosis III, as sole ‘King of Upper and Lower Egypt and Lord of the Two Lands’ is shown receiving
the pharaoh's white crown from the hands of the ancient Nubian god Dedwen. However, only five years later there had been a profound political change. By the end of Year 7, Queen Hatchepsut had advanced from being the mere ruler of Egypt by default to becoming an acknowledged king.

4

King of Egypt

He [Tuthmosis II] went forth to heaven in triumph, having mingled with the gods. His son stood in his place as king of the Two Lands, having become ruler upon the throne of the one who begat him. His sister the Divine Consort, Hatchepsut, settled the affairs of the Two Lands by reason of her plans. Egypt was made to labour with bowed head for her, the excellent seed of the god, which came forth from him.
¹

During Year 7 of the reign of Tuthmosis III, the Steward of Amen, Senenmut, buried both his parents in a modest tomb cut into the hillside directly beneath the site which had already been selected for his own magnificent funerary monument on the West Bank at Thebes. Following the interment, the entrance to the tomb was closed, and it was subsequently completely covered by the rubble excavated during the construction of Senenmut's own tomb which started slightly later in the same year. The smaller tomb disappeared from view until it was rediscovered by accident during the 1935–6 season of work carried out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The excavators, Ambrose Lansing and William Hayes, were the first to enter the burial chamber of Ramose and Hatnofer in over 3,000 years. Here they found a typical selection of grave goods, including several pottery jars or amphorae, one of which was dated to ‘Year 7’, one which bore the seal of the ‘God's Wife Hatchepsut’ and two which were stamped with the seal of ‘The Good Goddess Maatkare’. Maatkare (literally,
maat
is the Ka of Re, or Truth is the Soul of the sun god Re) is the throne name of King Hatchepsut. The dating of the amphorae, sealed into the burial chamber by the debris from Senenmut's own tomb, is beyond question, therefore we know that, by Year 7 of her regency, Hatchepsut was acknowledged to be a king of Egypt. She was now the Female Horus of Fine Gold, King of Upper and Lower Egypt Maatkare Khnemet-Amen Hatchepsut (The One who is joined with Amen, the Foremost of Women).

The exact date of the new king's official elevation is, however,

Fig. 4.1 The cartouche of King Maatkare Hatchepsut

unknown, and the subject is greatly complicated by the fact that Hatchepsut always used the same regnal years as Tuthmosis III, effectively dating her own reign from the time of her stepson's accession to the throne. Given her dominant role in the subsequent partnership, we might reasonably have expected to find that Hatchepsut had established her own independent regnal dates. As it seems unlikely that Hatchepsut ever considered herself to be junior to Tuthmosis III, the matching reign dates strongly suggest that she must have regarded herself as a king or co-regent from the moment of her husband's death. However, we know that this was not the case, and the contemporary evidence from the Semna temple already considered in
Chapter 3
confirms that Hatchepsut was still, in theory at least, subordinate to Tuthmosis III during the earlier part of his regnal Year 2.

It would be entirely wrong to see Hatchepsut's usurpation of kingly powers as a sudden and unexpected
coup
. Hers was a gradual evolution, a carefully controlled political manoeuvre so insidious that it might not have been apparent to any but her closest contemporaries. The surviving monumental evidence, scanty though it is, allows us to track Hatchepsut's progress as she moves swiftly from the conventional wife of the Berlin stela, standing placidly in line behind her mother and her husband–brother, to become the most influential woman Egypt has
ever known. Shortly before her coronation Hatchepsut is both regal enough to make offerings directly to the gods – hitherto the prerogative of the divine pharaoh – and wealthy enough to become the first non-king to commission a pair of obelisks. By now Hatchepsut is surely king of Egypt in all but name. However, no matter how gradual her assumption of power, there must have come a time when she crossed the line from queen to king and made her changed status public. There was a very great difference between being the person who actually ruled Egypt and becoming the acknowledged king, and her coronation and subsequent assumption of royal titles, albeit merely the formal acknowledgement of a
fait accompli
, must have had a definite date.

Contemporary documents and monumental inscriptions remain obstinately silent on this subject, while Hatchepsut herself chose to gloss over her periods as consort and regent, rewriting her own history so that she might invent a co-regency with Tuthmosis I which, together with the emphasis which was now to be placed on the myth of the divine birth of kings, would ‘prove’ beyond doubt her absolute right to rule. The legend of the miraculous birth of kings had always been an aspect of Egyptian kingship. The Westcar Papyrus, for example, a Middle Kingdom collection of fantastic stories about the 4th Dynasty royal court, tells us how during the Old Kingdom the Lady Reddjedet, assisted by the divine midwives Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet and Heket, gave birth to the triplet sons of Re. The three baby boys delivered by the goddess were to become Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare, the first three kings of the 5th Dynasty:

Isis placed herself before her, Nephthys behind her, Heket hastened the birth. Isis said, ‘Don't be so mighty in her womb, you whose name is Mighty.’ The child slid into her arms, a child of one cubit, strong boned, his limbs overlaid with gold, his headdress of true lapis lazuli. They washed him, having cut his navel cord, and laid him on a pillow of cloth. Then Meskhenet approached him and said: ‘A king who will assume the kingship in this whole land.’ And Khnum gave health to his body.
²

Hatchepsut was, however, the first pharaoh to make a feature of the story of her own divine conception and birth, ordering that the tale be told in a cartoon-like sequence of tasteful images and descriptive passages carved on the north side of the middle portico fronting her mortuary
temple at Deir el-Bahri. Her filial relationship with Amen was always extremely important to Hatchepsut and throughout her reign she took every available opportunity to give due acknowledgement to her heavenly father as, by promoting the cult of Amen, she was effectively reinforcing her own position and promoting herself. It would be too simple to see the Deir el-Bahri birth story as merely another example of Hatchepsut's insecurity about her right to rule. The scenes themselves are by no means timid or apologetic; they are miraculous and joyful, and they convey above all a sense of Hatchepsut's pride in her own origins and achievements. It is perhaps no coincidence that the only other complete cycle of divine birth scenes comes from the Luxor temple of the later 18th Dynasty king Amenhotep III, a temple which was dedicated to the celebration of the royal Ka, or the divine royal identity. Amenhotep III, not generally regarded as an insecure monarch, was the first pharaoh to promote himself as a god in his own lifetime. His own birth scenes bear a striking similarity to those of Hatchepsut, and it would appear that, having admired his predecessors’ work, he simply copied it wholesale, substituting the name of his own mother for that of Queen Ahmose.

Nor should the Deir el-Bahri scenes be regarded solely as a propaganda exercise as, from their position in the temple, it seems unlikely that they would have been seen by any but a handful of officiating priests who were already well aware of Hatchepsut's position. As we have already seen, Egyptian temples were not public buildings. They served as the home of the god and, as in any private home, the general public was kept outside the thick mud-brick enclosure walls. Only during the great festivals were the gates of the temple thrown open, and even then the public was only allowed access to the first court. The innermost sanctuary, where the king or the high priest worshipped on behalf of Egypt, was an intensely private place comparable to the master bedroom of a private home. The great temples of Egypt must have been oases of peace and tranquillity, a world apart from the bustling city life immediately outside their gates.

As Egyptian theology held that all kings were born the sons of Amen-Re, logic dictated that all queen mothers must have enjoyed sexual intercourse with Amen-Re. The Egyptians took a surprisingly practical approach to the subject of divine conception. Not for them the asexuality of an impersonal angelic annunciation. They knew that it took a man and a woman to make a baby and they recognized that their
gods were capable of a variety of sexual feelings – rape, homosexuality and masturbation all played a part in heavenly life – so they developed the doctrine of theogamy, the physical union of a queen with a god. Amen-Re would come to Egypt and actually sleep with the mother of his future child. In order to preserve the reputation of the queen, for adultery was a heinous social crime, Amen cunningly disguised himself as the king.

At the Deir el-Bahri temple, the story of Hatchepsut's conception starts in heaven where Amen has assembled before him a group of twelve important divinities, including Isis, Osiris, Nephthys, Horus, Seth and Hathor, in order to make a momentous pronouncement. Amen has decided that the time has come to father a princess who will govern Egypt with a glorious reign: ‘I will join for her the Two Lands… I will give her all lands and all countries.’ The god of wisdom, Thoth, here acting Hermes-like as the messenger of Amen, proclaims the name of the chosen mother-to-be: it is Queen Ahmose, wife of Tuthmosis I, for ‘she is more beautiful than any woman.’