The Woman Who Would Be King (51 page)

3.
The Red Chapel was found dismantled inside of Amenhotep III’s third pylon. That is why the original location of Hatshepsut’s masterpiece has been much debated. Some Egyptologists think that it was placed in the middle of the Palace of Truth, where the shrine of Philip Arrhidaeus is today; however, her structure seems too big to have actually fit in this space. If it was somehow jammed into her Palace of Truth, such placement would have severely limited the Red Chapel’s visibility. Newer Egyptological thinking places the Red Chapel in the Great Festival
Court of Thutmose II, in front of the Palace of Truth, where Hatshepsut could better display her divine predestination and ritual activity to her people and where the structure could better function as a barque shrine with an entrance and an exit. See Franck Burgos and François Larché, eds.,
La chapelle Rouge: Le sanctuaire de barque d’Hatshepsout
, vol. 2 (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 2008); Warburton,
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 236; and Blyth,
Karnak
, 57. For a reconstruction of the Red Chapel in different possible locations, see the UCLA Digital Karnak website at
http://​dlib.​etc.​ucla.​edu/​projects/​Karnak/​feature/​RedChapel
.

4.
For the Palace of Ma’at, see the UCLA Digital Karnak website at
http://​dlib.​etc.​ucla.​edu/​projects/​Karnak/​feature/​Palace​Of​Maat
.

5.
It was during Hatshepsut’s reign that we see a new emphasis on solarism and the cults of solar gods. She built solar altars for the first time in sandstone, a material evoking the sun. Bryan writes, “The piety and divine engenderment so consistently expressed by Hatshepsut was a source of inspiration to Amenhotep III. For it is this queen whom the later king imitated, even including a form of her divine birth reliefs and inscriptions in his new Luxor Temple. It was almost certainly her original plan to bring the southern temples of Thebes into a cultic cycle with Karnak that Amenhotep III explored and very nearly accomplished” (Kozloff and Bryan,
Egypt’s Dazzling Sun
, 96–97).

6.
A speech of the god Amen recorded on Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel includes many ritual duties for the king, including: “Fill the estate, supply the altar. Instruct the
wab
priest regarding their tasks. Advance the laws. Perpetuate the regulations. Enrich the property. Increase that which existed previously. Expand the space of my treasuries. Build without neglecting sandstone or granite. Renew for my temple the statues in good quality limestone. Advance this work for me in the future. Control the monuments of the temples. Install every god according to his (own) regulations. Each one there exactly according to his means. Advance his primeval time for him. Advancing his laws is the joy of a god.” For the translation, see Troy, “Religion and Cult,” 134.

7.
Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom kings likely instituted cult activity for royal statues, but we have little direct representation of the practice in their temples.

8.
Another block from the Red Chapel shows just such a priestess. It was carved with a woman’s figure labeled as the God’s Wife of Amen performing cult activity for the gods in the courtyard of the temple with attendants burning effigies of Egypt’s enemies upon a brazier of coals. She was meant to ritually roast these vile combatants alive. This female figure was not labeled as Nefrure, but if Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel was carved during the last five years of her reign and if Nefrure was still alive at this point, then the image was likely meant to have represented her. Why she is not named as such remains a vexing problem for Egyptologists. See Burgos and Larché,
La chapelle Rouge
, vol. 1: blocks 140, 292.

9.
See Dorman,
Monuments of Senenmut
, 79, and Schnittger,
Hatschepsut
, 24. There is actually no direct evidence that Nefrure was Amenemhat’s mother; see Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 238. For the suggestion that Satiah was the prince’s mother, see Dodson and Hilton,
Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt
, 132.

10.
For the argument that Nefrure was being groomed by her mother for the kingship, see Z. Szafrański, “Imiut in the ‘Chapel of Parents’ in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari,” in
8. Ägyptologische Tempeltagung: Inter-connections Between Temples
, ed. Monika Dolinska and Horst Beinlich, Königtum, Staat und Gesellschaft früher Hochkulturen 3 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010). Szafrański uses art historical evidence to make his case. The female figure in question is on the south side of the upper terrace at Hatshepsut’s temple of Djeser Djeseru. She was recarved and relabeled as Hatshepsut’s mother, Ahmes, and Szafrański thinks the image originally represented Nefrure.

11.
Troy,
Patterns of Queenship
, 141.

12.
This stela from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai is now in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum (JdÉ 38546). See Dorman, “Royal Steward Senenmut,” 108.

13.
Troy,
Patterns of Queenship
, 133–38.

14.
Szafrański, “Imiut in the ‘Chapel of Parents.’ ”

15.
When I say that Egyptologists only whisper about Hatshepsut’s possible murder, I mean that most do not want such unsubstantiated claims in print. Egyptologists today are loath to make the claim that either Hatshepsut or Nefrure may have been assassinated, probably because they are reacting to the unfounded and heavy-handed patriarchal arguments of early Egyptology (that Senenmut was Hatshepsut’s lover, for example, or that she was incapable of directing military campaigns—two claims for which there was never any real evidence), in addition to a healthy fear of appearing sensationalist in the manner of Bob Brier’s
The Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story
(New York: Putnam, 1998). What Egyptologists put in print is often different from what they might say at the bar among friends. In keeping with such hypothetical claims, Warburton places his intimations about Nefrure’s murder (and even Hatshepsut’s) in a footnote (
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 55–56n213.

16.
Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 242.

17.
About forty-two Theban tombs were commissioned by officials of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, a virtual explosion of private tomb building. In all the previous reigns of the Eighteenth Dynasty combined, only ten tombs were completed in Thebes. See Kozloff, “Artistic Production of the Reign of Thutmose III,” 302.

18.
For remarks on innovation during the reign of Hatshepsut, see Dorman,
Monuments of Senenmut
, 109.

19.
For more discussion of the co-option of elites during the reign of Hatshepsut, see Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 262, and Warburton,
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 261–65.

20.
Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 242.

21.
Kozloff, “Artistic Production of the Reign of Thutmose III,” 310.

22.
Hapuseneb probably predeceased Hatshepsut, because she was the only king mentioned in his tomb. Even late in his life, he decided not to include any text or image of Thutmose III. The next First High Priest of Amen was Menkheperreseneb, obviously from a family of Thutmose III supporters, given his name means “Menkheperre (Thutmose III) is healthy!” Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III,” 107–8.

23.
Senenmut was given the honor of having his name and image displayed at Deir el-Bahri dozens of times, including in the Punt reliefs and in the images hidden behind the door leaves on the upper terrace and in the Hathor chapel. Besides his many statues commissioned to stand along the processional routes at Karnak, Senenmut also had himself represented at the Mut temple gateway, which was later removed in the same manner as his hidden images at Deir el-Bahri. He also had images and statues set up at Luxor Temple. See Dorman,
Monuments of Senenmut
.

24.
Useramen’s tomb only mentions Thutmose III, and he served well into Thutmose III’s reign, suggesting that this honor may have been granted by Thutmose III, albeit following Hatshepsut’s lead with other officials. See Ziobek, E., “Denkmäler des Verziers User-Amen.”

25.
However, some early New Kingdom monarchs did place their burial chambers a short distance away from their actual pyramids. The burial chamber of Ahmose I (first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty) in his pyramid at Abydos was over a kilometer away from his temple. Amenhotep I, the second king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, may have been the first one to place his burial chamber in a remote valley on the other side of a cliff, away from his funerary temple, but until his tomb is firmly identified, we cannot say for sure.

26.
There is a great deal of disagreement about where Thutmose I was buried first and if KV 38 is his original tomb or not. Roehrig thinks KV 38 was indeed commissioned by the early Eighteenth Dynasty king. She also argues that KV 20 was originally made for Thutmose II but taken over by Hatshepsut, that KV 34 was constructed for Thutmose III, and that Hatshepsut added two side chambers to KV 20, with the intention to have herself buried with both her husband, Thutmose II, and her father, Thutmose I. Roehrig contends that the Amduat in her tomb was never completed. See Roehrig, “Two Tombs of Hatshepsut,” and John Romer, “The Tomb of Tuthmosis III,”
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo
31 (1975). For a counterargument, see Schnittger,
Hatschepsut
, 59–60.

27.
Hatshepsut’s Amduat text was not carved into the live rock but instead onto movable blocks. It has recently been demonstrated by Mauric-Barberio that the Amduat blocks in the tomb of Thutmose I (KV 38) and those in the tomb of Hatshepsut (KV 20) match and that all probably belong to Hatshepsut’s reign. Thus perhaps we should assign the innovation of including the Amduat in the royal tomb to Hatshepsut instead of her father; he is the one who can be credited with the radical
decision to move the royal burial to the Valley of the Kings. F. Mauric-Barberio, “Le premier exemplaire du Livre de l’Amdouat,”
Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale au Caire
101 (2001): 315–50. Warburton suggests that agents of Thutmose III moved some but not all of Hatshepsut’s Amduat blocks to the tomb of Thutmose I (KV 38) (
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 205). Tyldesley suggests that the tomb was unfinished and that the blocks were lying on the floor abandoned by the builders (
Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh
, 123).

28.
Peter Der Manuelian and Christian E. Loeben, “New Light on the Recarved Sarcophagus of Hatshepsut and Thutmose I in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,”
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
79 (1993): 121–55.

29.
For a description of the valley temple excavations, see Earl of Carnarvon and H. Carter,
Five Years’ Explorations at Thebes: A Record of the Work Done 1907–1911
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912).

30.
From the Second Hour of the Amduat, characterized by mourning and great preparation after the sun god has settled into the underworld. The translation is based on David Warburton and Erik Hornung,
The Egyptian Amduat: The Book of the Hidden Chamber
(Zurich: Living Human Heritage, 2007), 52–57.

31.
For information about ancient Egyptian funerary rituals, see Jan Assmann,
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt
, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005).

32.
The later tomb of Tutankhamun provides the only comparison for Hatshepsut’s possible funerary goods. See Nicholas Reeves,
The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). For a complete record of the excavation notes and photographs, see the Griffith Institute’s website on Tutankhamun’s tomb at
http://​www.​griffith.​ox.​ac.​uk/​discoveringTut/
.

33.
The Book of Hours was often preserved on papyrus, and it was meant to give the dead power over circumstances in the netherworld. The text is broken up into hours, as in the Amduat. For more on this text, see Raymond O. Faulkner, “An Ancient Egyptian ‘Book of Hours,’ ”
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
40 (1954): 34–39.

34.
Chapter 148 of the Book of the Dead is the “book for making the transfigured spirit excellent in the heart of Re, causing him to have power before Atum, magnifying him before the foremost of the West, enabling him to go out before the Ennead” and includes the Seven Celestial Cows (the Pleiades or Seven Sisters constellation that moved in the night sky and provided a means of counting the night hours). Also in Hatshepsut’s chapel are scenes of the Iunmutef priest—a figure who wears a leopard skin and the sidelock of youth, representative of the eldest son and heir—performing cult offerings and funerary ritual. The chapel walls preserve excerpts from the Pyramid Texts, the oldest known funerary texts from ancient Egypt, which provided protection and necessities to the dead in the next life. For all of these texts, see Marcelle Werbrouck,
Le temple d’Hatshepsout à Deir el Bahari
(Bruxelles: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1949).

35.
There is no evidence for it, but Warburton suggests an abdication of power before her actual death: “She certainly did not relinquish power voluntarily at this point, but it is not clear that she died either. However, it should not be forgotten that with the death of her daughter, the possibility of a female dynasty was gone—and there is no reason to believe that her daughter died naturally. It is thus also possible that Hatshepsut did in fact die at this point—but not necessarily accidentally or of natural causes” (
Architecture, Power, and Religion
, 55–56n213).

36.
Hawass, “Quest for Hatshepsut.” This mummy belonged to an old, very fat, diabetic woman whose teeth were so worn down that her age was estimated at between forty-six and sixty years. Many other circumstantial signs do not support the identification of KV 60A as Hatshepsut’s mummy; for example, not even the brain was removed during embalming. There is no reason to suggest that Hatshepsut received shoddy embalming just because her gender did not fit the office of kingship. If the Egyptians had wanted to harm her after death, they would have done a much more thorough job than poor embalming. Remnants of her burial suggest a traditional and high-cost affair. Furthermore, the estimated age at death of the KV 60A mummy is much older than historical documents allow for Hatshepsut.