About Queen Hatshepsut and achievements

Hatshepsut, was the daughter of Thutmose I (also known as Tuthmosis) and Queen Ahmose Nefertari. Hatshepsut (1473-1458 BC) was married to her half brother Thutmose II  perhaps in order to strengthen his claim to the throne, and they had a daughter together called Neferure. Hatshepsut commissioned official portraits of her daughter wearing the false beard and sidelock of youth. Some scholars speculate that this is evidence that Hatshepsut was priming Neferure for a future on the throne. The actual heir to the throne, the future Thutmose III, was in fact the son of one of his father's concubines.

As Thutmose III was the only male child, and his mother wasn't the queen, he was married to his half sister Neferure in order to reinforce his position as the rightful heir. He was still very young when his father (Thutmose II) died, therefore his step-mother Hatshepsut was appointed as his regent. Hatshepsut then went one step further and had herself crowned as pharaoh, taking the throne name "Maatkare". This allowed her to enjoy a long co-regency with the young Thutmose III and effectively blocked him from full power. She seems to have been supported by the priests of Amun, and some of the reliefs in her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri (near the Valley of the Kings) reinforced her claim to the throne by emphasising her divine birth, the result of a union between Amun and her mother Queen Ahmose.

Hatshepsut surrounded herself with strong and loyal advisors, many of whom are still known today: Hapuseneb, the High Priest of Amun, and her closest advisor, the royal steward Senemut. As pharaoh, she initiated building projects that were grander and more numerous than those of any of her Middle Kingdom predecessors. She employed two great architects: Ineni, who had worked for both her husband and father, and the royal steward Senemut. She had twin obelisks erected at the entrance to the the Temple of Karnak -  one still stands today, as the tallest surviving obelisk, the other has since broken in two and toppled. She later ordered two more obelisks to be made to celebrate her sixteenth year as pharaoh. However, one of the obelisks broke whilst being quarried, and was left in-situ at its quarrying site in Aswan, where it still is today.

The masterpiece of her building projects was her mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri (above). It was designed and implemented by Senemut on a site on the West Bank of the Nile close to the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. The focal point was the "Djeser-Djeseru" or the sublime of sublimes, a colonnaded structure sitting atop a series of terraces that were once graced with gardens. Built into a cliff face that rises sharply above it, Djeser-Djeseru and the other buildings of the Deir el-Bahri complex are considered to be among the great buildings of the ancient world.

Expeditions to The Land of Punt

During her reign there was renewed building activity at Thebes and elsewhere, culminating in her mortuary temple as probably the finest of her buildings. In the temple, reliefs tell of the transport of two enormous obelisks from the quarries at Aswan to the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak, and trading expeditions to the land of Punt ("land of the god", a region of East Africa whose precise location today is unknown) Byblos (ancient coastal town in modern Lebanon, 40km north of Beirut) and the Sinai (peninsula situated between Egypt and the levant). The temple reliefs include detailed depictions of the expedition on its second terrace, including the sea journey and even the reception offered by the chief of Punt. This depictions shows a bearded chief, accompanied by his excessively large queen who has a pronounced curvature of the spinal column.

Beehive shaped houses on stilts	The bearded chief and his large wife

Punt was the source of many exotic products such as gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals such as monkeys and baboons. As a distant and foreign land, Punt acquired an air of fantasy, and as such is mentioned in some narrative tales and poems from the Middle and New kingdoms.

 The Royal Beard

Monuments of Hatshepsut frequently portray her in kingly costume and the famous royal "false beard", often referring to her as though she were male (probably in accordance with the accepted decorum of kingship). When Thutmose III reached maturity he eventually became the sole ruler, but it is unclear whether Hatshepsut simply died or had to be forcibly removed from power. 

After her death, many of her reliefs sustained damage, where attempts were made to remove her name from them. It was originally thought that Thutmose III had immediately set about removing his step-mother's name from the monuments as retribution for her seize of power, but it is now known that this did not actually happen until considerably later in his reign. Hatshepsut's name was also omitted from subsequent king lists, indicating that her reign was perhaps considered by some to have been inappropriate and contrary to tradition.

Although a tomb had been prepared for her in the Valley of the Kings (discovered by Howard Carter in 1903) there is no evidence that it was ever used for her burial. She may have been buried in an earlier tomb in the cliffs to the south of Deir el-Bahri which had been constructed before her rise to the throne.

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