Hail To Tha Queen-----Hatshepsut

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Hatshepsut promoted peace, prosperity and great art.
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By Vibhuti Patel
Newsweek International

April 10-17, 2006 issue - A thousand years after the Pyramids were
built, Queen Hatshepsut, widow and half sister of King Thutmose II,
ascended Egypt's throne when the latter died prematurely in 1473 B.C.
As regent for her infant nephew and stepson, Thutmose III, she was not
the first woman to rule Egypt. But, for reasons that remain unknown, a
few years into her regency, Hatshepsut discarded the title "queen" and
became "king." She claimed double legitimacyâ€"as King Thutmose I's
eldest daughter and by virtue of her mythic self-propagated descent
from the great god Amun. Because Egyptian kings were near-divine and
crowned for life, Hatshepsut could not then abdicate in favor of her
stepson. She became his senior co-ruler and controlled the Two
Kingdoms, Upper and Lower Egypt, until her death 20 years later. Her
remarkable and successful reign is now being commemorated at New
York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in the show "Hatshepsut: From Queen
to Pharaoh" (through July 9).
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Hatshepsut's rule was peaceful, except for an early military
expedition against invaders that she herself led. It was also
prosperousâ€"under her, Egypt traded with its neighborsâ€"and has been
compared to that of England's Queen Elizabeth I and Russia's Catherine
the Great. Like them, she became a patron of art and architecture: by
encouraging the creation of some of Egypt's finest sculptures,
monumental statues, magnificent temples and stunning jewelry, she
launched an artistic renaissance that would influence ancient Egyptian
design and culture for centuries.

Among the many works on display at the Met are graceful statues of
Hatshepsut as pharaoh, clad in the scarf and cobra symbolic of
kingship, the short kilt worn by Egyptian men and the requisite false
beard. Externals aside, there is no attempt to hide the pharaoh's
gender: the body is slim, the face feminine, the eyes soft. The
inscriptions refer to "king," but the linguistic references are
feminine. Also on exhibit are sphinxes topped with the royal head that
decorated her famous colonnaded temple Djeser-Djeseru in the Valley of
the Kings; they are slender and feline, carved from various kinds of
stone. One entire gallery is dedicated to the numerousâ€"and
innovativeâ€"statues of Senenmut, the royal tutor who cared for
Hatshepsut's daughter and who commissioned much of the art and
architecture that defined Hatshepsut's reign.

Although there were many allusions to a powerful female pharaoh, her
name remained missing for centuries from Egyptian history. That's
because 20 years after her death, Thutmose III ordered an inexplicable
attack on Hatshepsut's legacy. Everything that identified her as
pharaoh was demolished: the cartouches bearing her name were erased
from sculptures, those statues of her bearing kingly regalia were
broken, and only those of her as queen were spared. The shattered
fragments were tossed into a hole outside her famous temple, where
they were found, excellently preserved, by the Metropolitan Museum's
excavators nearly 100 years ago. Reconstructed now, they puzzle
scholars who ponder the mystery of her erasureâ€"even as they bring her
back to vivid life.
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.