Since her two brothers, who normally would have succeeded to the throne, died prematurely, she and Thutmose II came to the throne after King Thutmose died in about 1512. Her husband probably reigned no more than three or four years, and our queen thereupon became regent for his son, Thutmose III, born of a minor woman of the harem.
Cartouche of Hatshepsut
Heiress to a line of influential queens, She then took effective control of the government, while young Thutmose III served as a priest of the god Amon.
In fact, an essential element of Hatshepsut's success was a group of loyal and influential officials who controlled all the key positions in her government. Emphasizing administrative innovation and commercial expansion, The Queen dispatched a major seaborne expedition to Punt, the African coast at the southernmost end of the Red Sea. Gold, ebony, animal skins, baboons, processed myrrh, and living myrrh trees were brought back to Egypt, the trees to adorn the foreground of the Queen's famous Dayr al-Bahri temple in western Thebes.
She also received large quantities of tribute from Asia, Nubia, and Libya. The numerous products of trade and tribute were partially devoted to the state god Amon-Re, in whosehonour Queen Hatshepsut undertook an extensive building program. She claimed that she restored the damage wrought by the Hyksos (earlier Asian kings) during their rule in Egypt.
The Statue of Hatshepsut:
Traditionally, the rulers of Egypt were male. Consequently, when Hatshepsut assumed the titles and functions of king she was portrayed in royal male costumes. Such representations were political statements, not reflections of the way she actually looked. In this finely carved sculpture she sits upon a throne and wears the royal kilt and the striped nemes (NEM-iss) headdress with the uraeus (cobra) and is bare chested like a man. However, she does not wear the royal beard, and the proportions of her body are delicate and feminine.
Reading from the top down, the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the left side of the throne say (the good goddess) and “lady of the Two Lands” (Upper and Lower Egypt). On the right side Hatshepsut is described as the (daughter of Re.) Small hemisphere glyphs (for “t”) indicate the female gender of these royal titles. It is thought that while the main sanctuary of the temple was dedicated to the god Amun-Re, this sculpture of the queen was placed in that chamber on the south side of the temple, where Hatshepsut’s personal funerary cult had its place.
A sense of royal dignity, composure, and permanence is created by the facial expression, the static pose, and the rectangular throne and high base from which the symmetrical and frontal figure emerges. Cracks in the face, neck, and torso indicate ancient damage sustained by the sculpture. In fact, only the head, forearms, and parts of the throne were excavated by the Museum archaeologists. The body had already been found in 1843Ð45 by a German expedition and became part of the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. The Berlin museum agreed to exchange the body of our statue for the body of a sphinx also found by Metropolitan Museum archaeologists that fit the head of a sphinx in their museum, and so it was possible to restore the Berlin and the New York statues to almost their original states. The left eye of the Metropolitan’s seated Hatshepsut was recently restored by Museum conservators.
Hatshepsut mummy:
The results of the search for the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut:
The mummy of Queen Hatshepsut was identified as KV60-A by the tooth found in the box bearing the queen’s names. The tooth, and the root attached to it, perfectly fit a socket and root in the mouth of KV60-A. The match is supported by the comparison of mitochondrial DNA with the mummy of Ahmose-Nefertari.
The Queen was not murdered, and we can completely disregard the theory that Thutmose III destroyed her monuments upon his accession. The theory that the destruction took place at the end his reign and the beginning of the reign of his son, Amenhotep II,seems even more plausible than before, now that we know that the queen’s mummy was not damaged, but left in good condition. Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel at Karnak shows the queen performing the heb-sed race, along with her coronation and participation in offerings to Amun at the Opet festival and the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. She is shown in many of these scenes together with Thutmose III. The chapel probably begun during her reign and finished during that of her stepson. The defacement of her image and cartouches in the chapel was never completed, further evidence that the destruction of her memory carried out at the end of Thutmose III’s reign was not an indication of vengeful rage.
We are now sure that the mummy in the Egyptian Museum thought to be that of Thutmose I is not, in fact, the mummy of the King.
1. The position of the arms beside the body is not that of a royal mummy.
2. The mummy’s facial features do not match those of the Thutmosid family.
3. We found an arrowhead in the chest of the mummy, which shows that this man was killed in battle.
4. The mummy’s owner died around the age of 30.
5. The mummy was discovered inside the two coffins which, as we discussed previdusly may or may not have belonged to Thutmose I.
The mummy of Queen Hatshepsut will be moved with that of her wet-nurse to the Royal Mummies Room in the Egyptian Museum, with the information of our investigation displayed next to them. I believe that the CT-scan machine and the DNA laboratory will open up a new era in the study and identification of Egyptian mummies.
sources:
Zahi Hawass, The Search for the mummy of Queen HatshepsutThe publications of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
0 comments:
Post a Comment