Hatshepsut (Maatkare)

Overview

Hatshepsut (throne name Maatkare) was one of the most successful rulers of the 18th Dynasty. She began as regent for her infant stepson Thutmose III around 1479 BCE and, by about Year 7, had taken the full status and titles of pharaoh, reigning for roughly 22 years until her death around 1458 BCE.

Lineage & family

• Father: Thutmose I
• Mother: Queen Ahmose
• Grandmother: Ahmose-Nefertari, a revered figure who established the title "God's Wife of Amun"
• Husband (half-brother): Thutmose II
• Daughter: Neferure, God's Wife of Amun, who died around Year 15
• Stepson and co-ruler: Thutmose III, who inherited the throne as a two-year-old infant

Key associates

• Senenmut: chief architect, steward and tutor to Neferure, who oversaw her major monuments. A romantic relationship with Hatshepsut has often been suggested, but the evidence — workmen's graffiti and hidden carvings in her temple — is circumstantial.
• Ineni: a courtier who recorded events of the early regency.

Achievements & events

• Divine legitimacy: she promoted a "divine birth" narrative, claiming the god Amun had visited her mother to conceive her.
• Iconography: she adopted male pharaonic regalia (false beard, kilt) to satisfy the theological requirement that the king embody the male god Horus — a matter of role, not personal identity.
• Expedition to Punt (around Year 9): a fleet of five ships reached the "Land of the Gods" (probably the Horn of Africa), returning with live myrrh trees, frankincense, gold and exotic animals.
• Military campaigns: despite a reputation for a peaceful reign, campaigns were mounted into Nubia (notably Year 12) and Canaan.

Monuments

• Deir el-Bahari: her celebrated terraced mortuary temple on the West Bank at Luxor.
• The Red Chapel: a red quartzite shrine at Karnak for the Opet Festival.
• Obelisks: quarried at Aswan and raised at Karnak.
• Speos Artemidos: a rock-cut temple dedicated to the lioness goddess Pakhet.

Death & discovery

• The leading interpretation is that she died around age 55, with evidence pointing to bone cancer alongside diabetes and severe dental disease, though the exact cause is not settled.
• Mummy identification (2007): a team led by Zahi Hawass identified her mummy in KV60 (the tomb of her wet nurse); the identification rested on matching a loose molar in a canopic box bearing her name to a socket in the mummy's jaw.
• Erasure: her monuments were later systematically defaced and her name removed. This now looks less like an act of jealousy by Thutmose III and more like a calculated, later political move — continued under Amenhotep II — to secure the male line of succession.

Research: after Shaw, Oxford History of Ancient Egypt; Hawass et al. (2007).