HE FEMALE PHARAOH
In the third reign of the 18th Dynasty, Thutmose I and his principal wife Ahmose were blessed with the birth of a daughter. They named her Hatshepsut, ‘foremost of noblewomen’. It was to prove a prophetic choice. For, in a royal house accustomed to king’s wives and king’s daughters with forceful personalities, the young princess was to outdo all her forebears, winning for herself greater power than all of them.
Little is known of Hatshepsut’s early life, during her father’s reign. Although she would have grown up among the royal womenfolk in one of the ‘harem palaces’, she must have become aware of her father’s growing reputation as a great conqueror; she certainly seems to have inherited his resolution, determination and courage. As a young woman, perhaps still in her teens, she was married, as custom required, to a close royal relative. Her husband was her half-brother (Thutmose I’s son by another wife) Thutmose. Together the couple had a daughter, named Neferura. Mother and daughter were to remain close throughout their lives, their fates closely intertwined.
The death of Thutmose I must have come as a crushing blow to Hatshepsut, who already identified herself very much with her father. Moreover, she was now the wife of the new king, Thutmose II – even if she had to share his affections with a secondary consort, Iset, who had already born him a son and heir. None the less, Thutmose II’s formal inscriptions gave Hatshepsut prominence, as the King’s Daughter, King’s Sister, God’s Wife and King’s Great Wife. One senses a growing awareness in the young woman of her own dynastic importance. Little wonder then, that when her husband died after a brief reign of two years, Hatshepsut seized the moment. An inscription records the new status quo: ‘His son (Thutmose III) arose on the throne as king of the Two Lands and ruled on the seat of the one who begot him. His sister, the god’s wife Hatshepsut, controlled the affairs of the land.’
It was partly a question of practical politics: since both the designated heir, Thutmose III, and his half-sister, Neferura, were children, a regency was essential. At the start, Hatshepsut continued to refer to herself as King’s Great Wife, or as God’s Wife, acknowledging that her status as regent derived from her dead husband. But after only a short while, she began to adopt more explicitly kingly titles, such as Lady of the Two Lands, an ingenious female version of one of the traditional monikers of kingship. The calculated use of epithets to enhance her position was accompanied by acts traditionally associated with the royal prerogative, such as the erection of a pair of obelisks at Karnak and temple reliefs showing her making offerings directly to the gods. At some point after seven years as regent, Hatshepsut made her bid for ultimate power, abandoning the pretence of the regency in favour of full kingly status. She adopted the traditional five-fold titulary of an Egyptian monarch and had herself depicted in reliefs wearing the (male) costume of a king.
A woman as regent was one thing: a woman as pharaoh was quite another (there had been only one previous instance in Egypt’s long history as a nation-state). Hatshepsut made use of the five-hundred-year-old institution of co-regency to have herself crowned king without needing to oust Thutmose III and risk civil war; as designated heir, he would have had powerful backing, especially among the military. There can be little doubt that she triumphed through the force of her own personality. Yet she cannot have acted alone; she must have been surrounded and supported by officials willing to back her unprecedented bid for power. The most prominent of these was her steward, Senenmut (no. 44); others included the Chancellor Nehesi, and the administrator of the royal estate, Amenhotep. They all shared one thing in common: as men of humble background, they depended upon Hatshepsut for their continued status. Hence their fate was bound up with hers, and it would have been in their interests to offer her unstinting support.
The office of kingship was inherently male, so Hatshepsut’s titles and images had to fudge the issue of her gender, using male as well as female epithets and attributes. She and her advisers embarked on an evermore-extreme propaganda campaign, rewriting history to legitimize her position. First, she used the same regnal years as Thutmose III, thus effectively dating the beginning of her ‘reign’ to the death of Thutmose II and the coronation of Thutmose III. Next, she ignored Thutmose II altogether and had herself presented as the anointed heir of her father, Thutmose I: a relief in her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri showed her being crowned at court, before Thutmose I, in the presence of the gods, on the auspicious occasion of the New Year’s festival. A further step was to invoke the myth of divine birth, promoting the idea that she had been conceived and chosen by the supreme god Amun to be king of Egypt. Perhaps most audacious of all such attempts at myth-making was the inscription she had carved over the lintel at Speos Artemidos, the first rock-cut temple in Egypt, located in an isolated wadi south of Beni Hasan. Although ostensibly dedicated to Pakhet, the cat goddess, the shrine really served to cast Hatshepsut in the role of national liberator, the lintel inscription identifying her as the ruler who drove out the Hyksos (and hence conveniently ignoring the first three kings of the 18th Dynasty).
With her position on the throne secure, Hatshepsut turned her attention to the traditional roles of kingship, not least construction projects. During her decade and a half as king, her architects and artists displayed new heights of creativity, building monuments for their sovereign throughout her realm, from Buhen in Nubia to Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai. As royal patron, she showered attention on the great temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak, adding two new chambers, an eighth pylon, a processional way and bark-shrines leading from Karnak southwards to Luxor Temple, and an innovative sanctuary of red quartzite (the ‘Palace of Maat’, also known as the ‘Red Chapel’). However, her most ambitious and famous addition to the country’s greatest religious complex was a pair of obelisks, erected between the fourth and fifth pylons which her father had built. The inscriptions on the bases of these giant granite needles (the one that remains in situ is the tallest standing obelisk in Egypt) stress Hatshepsut’s piety and legitimacy, and give striking insights into her character: ‘Let not him who shall hear this say it is a lie which I have said; but say “How like her it is,” true in the sight of her father!’
Surpassing even her additions to Karnak, Hatshepsut’s best-known building is her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri in western Thebes. Named Djeser-djeseru (‘holy of holies’), it was modelled on the adjacent temple of King Mentuhotep II (no. 27), but surpassed it in scale and magnificence. It was designed ‘as a garden for my father Amun’; its ramps leading from terrace to terrace were lined with trees. Behind the colonnades forming the façade of each level, coloured reliefs depicted the most important events of Hatshepsut’s reign: the quarrying, transport and erection of the Karnak obelisks; and the voyage to the distant land of Punt. While Djeser-djeseru was to be the public face of Hatshepsut’s mortuary cult, a secret burial was being prepared for her in the traditional resting-place of pharaohs, the Valley of the Kings. She had started her first Theban tomb while still King’s Great Wife to Thutmose II. Her kingly tomb was altogether more impressive. It was possibly intended to run right under the mountain, so that the burial-chamber would lie under her mortuary temple on the other side of the cliff. However, a seam of poor-quality rock frustrated these ambitious plans. None the less, the tomb remains the longest and deepest in the Valley. Hatshepsut moved her father’s sarcophagus into the burial-chamber, to lie beside her own: she clearly intended to associate herself with her illustrious parent for the rest of eternity.
Yet Hatshepsut’s eventual fate remains a mystery. Her last appearance in the written sources was the twentieth year of her ‘reign’ (the thirteenth of her co-regency). Most probably, she simply died of natural causes (she would have been in her mid-fifties), for Thutmose III went on to complete, enlarge and decorate many of her temples. Only late in his reign did he order the persecution of her memory. Her statues were smashed, her images chiselled out, her obelisks at Karnak hidden from view behind screen walls. Yet the destruction was selective: only references to Hatshepsut as king were targeted, while her images and monuments as King’s Great Wife were spared. It seems, therefore, that Thutmose III was inspired, not by a personal vendetta against the woman who had kept him from the throne, but by a desire to correct the record and obliterate any sign of a woman having held the sacred office of kingship. The name of Hatshepsut was thus omitted from later king lists, but her monuments and her fame persist to this day: enduring testaments to an extraordinary woman.
44 | Senenmut
F
AVOURED COURTIER OF
H
ATSHEPSUT
Hatshepsut’s rise from royal widow to king could not have occurred without the backing of a group of powerful officials. Chief among them, and one of the most prominent dignitaries from the entire New Kingdom, was her steward Senenmut. His background was not untypical of Hatshepsut’s inner circle, but his destiny was exceptional.
Senenmut came from Armant (ancient Iuny), to the south of Thebes. His parents, although probably members of the small literate class, were untitled. Senenmut grew up with three brothers and two sisters. There are hints of military service during his early adulthood, but his chosen career was in the administration, more particularly the supervision of the huge estates controlled by the temple of Amun at Karnak, which was the largest landowner in the region. It was a steady job, but certainly not the passport to great wealth; when Senenmut’s father died, he was afforded only the simplest of burials, without any grave goods. By contrast, when Senenmut’s mother died some years later, her own possessions included two silver jugs and a silver bowl, and the equipment provided by her son was of the highest quality, including a gilded mummy mask and a heart scarab of serpentine set in gold. Senenmut was also able to take advantage of his new-found wealth to re-inter his father in more luxurious circumstances.
The explanation for Senenmut’s sudden and marked increase in prosperity lies with the regency of Hatshepsut. It was she who appointed him to his most lucrative offices, and he rose to be her most influential courtier. Whether she simply admired him for his administrative abilities, or whether there was some deeper attraction, cannot be determined. There were certainly rumours at court about the nature of the relationship between the monarch and her right-hand man, but these could have been motivated by jealousy at his unrivalled influence. What is clear is that Senenmut enjoyed privileged access to Hatshepsut and to her daughter Neferura, in his capacity as the princess’s tutor. Besides Neferura’s education, Senenmut’s areas of responsibility included the royal treasury, and hence, effectively, the national economy; oversight of the royal audience chamber, giving him control over who Hatshepsut did and did not see; and the stewardship of Hatshepsut’s and her daughter’s personal property. Senenmut’s monuments record over ninety different titles held by him at various stages of his career; in affairs of state, only the vizier was his equal.
He clearly revelled in his new-found affluence: twenty-five statues or statue fragments of Senenmut have survived. No other official of the New Kingdom has left such an array of private sculpture. Many, if not all, were probably gifts from Hatshepsut herself. Several were innovative in form, and marked the first appearance of new types. It is possible that Senenmut devised some of these himself.
His artistic and creative interests were soon recognized by Hatshepsut who promoted him to be Overseer of All the King’s Works and Chief Architect. In this capacity, he oversaw the quarrying, transport and erection of her two great obelisks at Karnak. The barges to ferry them from Aswan to Thebes must have been over 90 m (300 ft) long and 30 m (100 ft) wide. He reopened the sandstone quarries at Gebel el-Silsila in preparation for an upsurge in royal construction projects, and personally supervised some of his monarch’s highest-profile commissions: ‘It was the Chief Steward, Senenmut, who conducted all the works of the king in Karnak, in Armant and Deir el-Bahri; and of Amun in the temple of Mut, in Ishry and in Luxor Temple…’
The most significant monument by far was Djeser-djeseru, the ‘holy of holies’, Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple in western Thebes. Senenmut’s role in its planning and construction is not clear, but he was marked out for special favour in its decorative scheme. Representations of him appear in niches on the temple’s upper terrace, and he also appeared in the reliefs of the expedition to Punt. A better insight into his character, however, is provided by a third image, concealed behind the open doors of the small shrine in the upper sanctuary. Here, he had himself depicted kneeling and worshipping. For a commoner to be represented in the most sacred part of the temple, in such close proximity to the god’s cult image, was an unthinkable act of lèse-majesté; but Senenmut evidently could not resist the chance to buy himself immortality in this way. His unique position in charge of Djeser-djeseru meant that he, and he alone, could get away with such a daring breach of protocol.
Ironically, Hatshepsut’s accession as king seems to have brought about something of a decline in Senenmut’s standing at court. Perhaps now that she had attained the highest office in the land, she no longer had such a need for him. He was replaced as tutor to Neferura, but continued to enjoy wealth and status as Chief Steward of Amun, in charge of the extensive estates, granaries, livestock, gardens and craftsmen controlled by the Karnak priesthood. Having devoted many years of his life to Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, he now turned his attention to his own funerary preparations. Like his sovereign, he chose two prime sites. His public tomb-chapel was built in a prominent cemetery at western Thebes. But he also made provision for a more discreet burial-place at Deir el-Bahri. Although the entrance was outside the sacred enclosure, the deep entrance stairway led to a burial-chamber right underneath the temple’s outer court. He intended to spend eternity in the most auspicious environment possible.
Senenmut’s demise is as hazy as his rise to power. He was still active in the sixteenth year of Hatshepsut’s reign, but disappeared from the official record soon afterwards. It is not known if he fell permanently out of favour, retired from public life or simply died from natural causes. What is certain is that he was not laid to rest in either of his funerary monuments, and that, at some later date, his memory suffered persecution. Perhaps his enemies – and he must have made many – exacted their retribution when they got the chance. For there were no descendants to look after Senenmut’s inheritance: he died without issue and probably never married. That seems to have been the price of winning and retaining the favour of his strong-willed, jealous, female monarch.
45 | Thutmose III
C
REATOR OF AN
E
GYPTIAN EMPIRE
Like Hatshepsut (no. 43) before him, Thutmose III consciously modelled himself on his illustrious forebear, Thutmose I. For the female king, her father had been a model of royal legitimacy, whose name and reputation she exploited for her own political ends; but for her successor, it was his grandfather’s military achievements that provided the greatest inspiration. Thutmose I’s conquests in western Asia and Nubia had extended the boundaries of pharaonic rule wider than ever before, effectively creating an Egyptian empire. On achieving sole rule after the demise of Hatshepsut, Thutmose III was determined to equal, even to outdo, these victories. So began the reign of the most successful military leader ever to sit on the throne of Horus.
Thutmose lost little time in pursuing his objectives, launching his first foreign campaign in only the second year of his independent reign. It was to be followed by annual military expeditions for the next eighteen years. The annals describing these epic battles, inscribed on the walls of Karnak temple, constitute the longest historical narrative to have survived from ancient Egypt. They were probably based upon actual campaign journals, such as those kept by the army commander Tjaneny: ‘I recorded the victories he [i.e. the king] won in every land, putting them into writing according to the facts.’
The first campaign was carefully planned to achieve maximum strategic impact. Egypt faced three rival centres of power in the Near East: the Kingdom of Mitanni (ancient Naharin), with its heartland beyond the river Euphrates; Tunip, in the lower Orontes valley; and an alliance of city states based around the fortress of Kadesh in the middle Orontes valley. A key member of the Kadesh alliance was the town of Megiddo, in the plain of Esdraelon (the Jezreel Valley, northern Israel). Not only was Megiddo a strategically important site in itself, Egyptian intelligence also brought word that it was playing host to a key meeting of the leaders of the Kadesh alliance. As the king himself put it, ‘The capture of Megiddo is the capture of a thousand towns.’ There was no time to lose.
Thutmose marched his army to Gaza in just ten days, captured the city for future use as a forward base, then pressed on for Megiddo, some 130 km (80 miles) to the north. Halting a little way off, the king consulted his commanders about which of three possible routes to take. Two were straightforward, bringing the army out to the north of the town. The third, southern route passed through a narrow defile and was thus much riskier. In defiance of his officers’ advice, Thutmose chose the last and led his army from the front. This was only the first of many instances of strategic brilliance on the king’s part. The enemy had assumed that the Egyptian army would take one of the easier routes, and was thus taken completely by surprise when the Egyptian forces appeared. Only the lack of discipline among the Egyptian soldiers – who turned to looting rather than finishing the assault – spared the Kadesh alliance complete annihilation. The princes of the confederation were able to escape back to the fortified town of Megiddo, even if some of them had to be hauled up onto the ramparts by their clothes. But nothing except complete victory would satisfy Thutmose. His forces laid siege to Megiddo for seven months, after which the town capitulated and surrendered to Egyptian might. With such a decisive moral victory, the king’s forces swept through the entire region, capturing another 119 towns in swift succession.
Military victories on this scale were rare, and news of the young king’s conquests reached as far as Assur, on the banks of the Tigris. The following year, the Assyrian ruler sent tribute to Thutmose III, determined to maintain good relations with the new power in the Levant. Campaign followed campaign in subsequent years, no fewer than fourteen of them directed against a single objective: the city of Kadesh. While it proved stubbornly resistant to Egyptian attack, other towns were less fortunate. The siege and ingenious capture of Joppa (modern Jaffa) passed into folklore, as did Thutmose’s achievements in the thirty-third year of his reign. That was the occasion when, aping his great predecessor, he crossed the Euphrates and erected a boundary stela next to Thutmose I’s own monument. To achieve this, the Egyptian fleet had to be transported overland by ox-carts from the Mediterranean coast to the Euphrates, a distance of 400 km (250 miles). Not content at such a prodigious undertaking, he also dispatched a trading expedition to distant Punt in the very same year. Never had Egypt’s power been felt over so wide an area.
Thutmose’s last campaign took place in his forty-second year on the throne, by which time he must have been in his late forties or early fifties. Even so, he led his army from the front. After nearly two decades of warfare, he achieved his ultimate prize: the defeat and capture of Kadesh, combined with the invasion and subjugation of Tunip. All opposition to Egypt in northwestern Syria had been vanquished. Territory was not, however, the only prize: Thutmose also took three women of Syrian extraction (Menwi, Merti and Menhet) as wives, to add to his three Egyptian consorts.
In parallel with these extraordinary victories in the Levant, Thutmose’s troops also fought regular campaigns in Nubia, extending Egyptian control as far south as the Fourth Cataract. The booty and tribute which flowed in from such extensive conquests funded an ambitious building programme throughout the empire. Thutmose paid particular attention to restoring the monuments of his illustrious warrior predecessors Senusret I and III, Amenhotep I and Thutmose I. His own greatest projects were at Karnak, the religious epicentre of his new realm. He rebuilt the hypostyle hall of Thutmose I, and covered it with a new ceiling. He dismantled Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel, replacing it with a new Sixth Pylon and a red granite bark shrine. He built a hall supported by a pair of unique ‘heraldic pillars’, and a huge enclosure wall around the central part of Karnak, with rows of chapels and workshops. His most distinctive addition was a mammoth Festival Hall in the eastern part of the temple, begun shortly after the start of his sole reign. Its columns were designed to resemble tent-poles, reminding him of the temporary palaces he used on campaign. The walls of one chamber were covered with a list of sixty-one royal predecessors, reinforcing his own position as the worthy successor of generations of kings; another chamber was decorated with scenes of the exotic flora and fauna ‘which His Person found on the hill country of Retjenu (Syria-Palestine)’.
Thutmose’s campaigns in the Near East thus dominated his reign and his monuments. By the end of his fifty-three years on the throne, Egypt controlled a vast swathe of territory from the banks of the Euphrates to the distant reaches of the Upper Nile. Never again would the pharaohs rule over such an empire. Moreover, it had been created largely through the energy and determination of one man. Little wonder that the cult of Thutmose III was honoured for another 1,500 years, until the end of the Ptolemaic Period; or that his name, inscribed on scarabs and amulets, was believed to provide magical protection. For he was, without doubt, the greatest of all soldier pharaohs.
46 | Menkheperraseneb
H
IGH
P
