Undoubtedly the greatest cause of adversity Hatshepsut faced both during her lifetime and posthumously was the fact that she was a female pharaoh, a position of power that beforehand had almost solely been available only to males.
The stigma ancient Egyptian society held against women meant that being a female with a position of power and commanding the respect of their subjects was close to impossible. However once Hatshepsut was eventually crowned as pharaoh she gained both respect and admiration of her policies and decisions from virtually all Egyptians and even foreigners.
Many of her negative qualities have been amplified throughout history, from her successor Thutmose III and many historians of the last century, all painting an image of a ‘wicked stepmother’ and a nasty woman who lied and manipulated her way to the top. Some have even gone as far as to speculate that she must have had a man helping her from the sidelines, as according to them no woman is capable of all that she achieved.
127 our experts are availableright now
One of the most notable examples of this is from historian Willian C. Hayes, who wrote in 1927 for the Metropolitan that Hatshepsut was the “vilest type of usurper”, and dubbed her male portrayals as an act of “outrageous deception” and “deviant behaviour”.
He continues, writing “It was not long before this vain, ambitious and unscrupulous woman showed… her true colours”. Similarly, historian Alan H. Gardiner wrote in 1961 that “not even a woman of the most virile character could have attained such a pinnacle of success without masculine support”.
Disregarding the obvious gender bias, both of these statements have been widely derided by modern experts as a clear underestimation of Hatshepsut and an unreliable account of her character. In particular Catherine Roehrig -a curator of Egyptian art – disagrees with this assessment, stating that far from stealing the throne from Thutmose III, “Hatshepsut may have had to declare herself kind to protect the kingship from her stepson”.
Thutmose III was also a major figure in the attempt to discredit Hatshepsut’s name after her passing, as in a shocking move he had almost every image of her in Egyptian art obliterated. All obelisks, reliefs and statues depicting Hatshepsut were desecrated, removing her image totally from Egypt, particularly in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri.
There have been many theories as to why Thutmose made this decision, with the most likely being the unorthodoxy of a female ruler and Thutmose III’s desire to remove her from history so the throne appeared to transfer directly from Thutmose II to Thutmose III. Despite facing adversity for nothing more than her gender, Hatshepsut bent the rules of ancient Egypt, showing to her subjects that women were just as capable of ruling as men.
