What happened to Queen Hatshepsut?
Who is Queen Hatshepsut?:
Queen Hatshepsut the daughter of King Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose, sister and wife of King Thutmose II and (step mother, mother in law and aunt) of Thutmose III. She is the fifth one to rule in the 18th Dynasty and the first woman to represent herself as a man in the ancient Egyptian history.
How she succeeded to rule Egypt for 21 years?:
In ancient Egypt women was equal to men nearly in everything as a person but in jobs it was quite different as it was known that the man used to hold difficult jobs but women used to stay inside house raise kids and take care of other simple jobs as sewing, spinning and making jewelries.
In the royal and religious life the woman could be the Queen or gods wife, could be the priest of goddesses and dancer in the ritual performances. Women even exercised more power and independence over men, but ruling Egypt position was usually for men.
Hatshepsut fought to stay on throne all this time but fought smartly. She was close to her father and help him in everything learned everything about ruling Egypt more than her half-brother Thutmose II who was his mother just a consort named Isis.
As it known Hatshepsut married her half-brother to keep the royal blood safe and gave birth to her daughter Nefrure and like father like son Thutmose II had his son Thutmose III from also from a consort. It was not good for Hatshepsut as she wanted the throne for herself also after the death of her husband so she controlled the life of the child Thutmose III and took him from his mother letting her only feed him every day. When Thutmose III grew up she sends him to the military school in the desert for military training and to get rid of him in one of the military missions and with such a plan she will not be accused by killing him, what a brilliant idea right. She also proofed her right to access the throne by the story of her divine birth saying that her father was Amen Re and then she is the divine child so she has the right to rule Egypt and started to rule Egypt with her new state as he not she.
But contrary to expectations Thutmusis III grew up strongly to be a great general and get rid of Hatshepsut. It’s not proofed that he is the one who killed her, some sources saying that she had cancer and just died after a long fight with it. But wasn’t normal that Senmut her architecture and the tutor of her daughter also disappeared. Some rumors said that he was her lover and what support this opinion the scenes was depicted on his tomb that she gave the permission to him to build above her mortuary Temple Al-Dier Al-Bahary.
After the return of Thutmose III Hatshepsut and Senmut disappeared and her cartouches get erased from all her monuments and her statues get demolished, little only survived.
The reign of the Queen:
At the beginning she was a regent to Thutmose III because he was too young to rule Egypt after the death of his father so Hatshepsut ruled as a regent until sending him to the military school then her solo ruling period begun. Some said that her ruling years including the years that she ruled as a co-regent with Thutmose III.
The reign of Hatshepsut was peaceful and full with expeditions especially to punt for bringing Myrrh trees and Incense to burn inside her temple and you will find the roots of a Myrrh tree still exist in front of her temple.
For making the trading mission easier she reestablished the trade networks that were destroyed by Hyksos in the 2nd intermediate period.
She built a lot of constructions as her reign known for prosperity of buildings and constructing obelisks reached its peak in her reign and the unfinished obelisk related to her showed us the mechanism of how it was done.
Reign of Thutmose III:
In the reign of Thutmose III, he gave more attention to the military life than anything. Thutmose III was the first one to cross the Euphrates after his grandfather Thutmose I; he expanded the boarders of Egypt from Euphrates in east to Nubia in south.
Thutmose III conducted 16 campaigns in 20 years and 17 campaigns in his reign from Euphrates in Far East to Nubia in the south.
The most famous battle of the 17 is Battle of Megiddo which in Thutmose III used a unique technique where he took the route that is in the heart of the mountain which was the shortest and surprised the army of Kadesh and attacked them rapidly, they didn’t expect that the Egyptian king will take this route but he did. Unfortunately the Egyptian army was busy collecting the spoils giving the chance to Kadesh army to escape to their city Megiddo, Thutmose III had no choice rather than besiege the city for 7 months and finally he took the city at the end.
Thutmose III had a unique style in the architecture where he built the only known of its kind in Egypt style of columns, heraldic pillars. Its two large columns standing alone not supporting a roof, it’s believed that his jubilee hall was the first example of building created in basilica style.
King Thutmose III gave more attention to the Karnak, the great edifice where he had done many achievements as he had rebuilt the hypostyle hall of his grandfather Thutmose I and he didn’t forger to eliminate the red chapel of Hatshepsut, he also built the 6th Pylon from the 10 pylons in the Karnak, a shrine for the divine bark of Amen with an antechamber in front of the shrine with his unique heraldic pillars supporting the roof but the most important structure among them all is the festival hall where he recorded all the all the fauna and flora he collected from the his campaigns in Asia as the chicken and the pomegranate, all this time Egyptians depended on ducks and goose.
At the end we can’t say that Thutmose III had killed or harmed Hatshepsut he possibly just removed her from the throne, as the throne was his right from the beginning, or he might really have killed her. We don’t know, but what we are sure about that there are more to discover about Egyptian history.
