Queen Hatshepsut

In the old city of Thebes, the capital of strong kings and rulers called Pharaohs, an unthinkable thing happened in 1515 B.C., a mere female seized the throne. She dressed as a man, built a temple and had the people honor her as Pharaoh.

Queen Hatshepsut is the only female Pharaoh to have ruled over Egypt. When her father, Pharaoh Tuthmoses I died, her younger brother, Tuthmoses II, became Pharaoh. In Ancient Egypt, the women couldn't reign but tradition had it that only the women in Egypt carried the royal blood, not the males.

(Hatchepsut built this temple to the goddess Isis, goddess of fertility. She represented herself as a male Pharaoh.)

(Below: Pharaoh presening gifts to the god Horus (with the head of a falcon.) This god guided the dead to the afterlife in the boat of death. The colors are still

great after 3500 years and were made with egg white.

To become Pharaoh, the man had to marry a female of royal blood, often a sister. Tuthmoses II married Hatshepsut, gave her a daughter, and died young. His son by another wife, Tuthmoses III, was still a child.

Hatshepsut became regent. They ruled together for a number of years until she proclaimed herself Pharaoh, something almost unheard of, despite the higher status of women in Egypt compared to women in other cultures at the time.

Before Hatshepsut, there were queens who had ruled Egypt... but not a female Pharaoh.

(Here Hatshepsut dressed as a male Pharaoh).

She managed to rule for about twenty years, before disappearing from history... coinciding with Thuthmose III's becoming Pharaoh in his own right. He erased her name from all the scriptures.

Later, the Christian monks built the monastery of Deir El Bahari, next to Hatshepsut's Temple.

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