The 54-year-old reign of Pharaoh Thutmosis III it began under the regency of Hatshepsut , his aunt and stepmother, remembered as the "first" female pharaoh in history; the only daughter of Thutmosis I and his Great Royal Wife, she was trained by him to reign.
In the inscriptions Hatshepsut is not only described as a divine bride, on the inscriptions her name appears followed by “ Maatkara “, That is, her prenomen; "Hatshepsut, the first of the nobles, truth-justice is the soul of the sun". Once she took the throne and identified herself in the figure of a real pharaoh, she could rely on only one previous female model:Sobekkara Sobekneferu (better known as Nefrusobek ), daughter of Amenemhat III, who reigned at the end of the twelfth dynasty. After the death of her brother Amenemhat IV she took the regency of the throne for a little less than four years, closing the Middle Kingdom, which was succeeded by the well-known and confused "second intermediate period". There is no evidence of her co-regency with her brother, it seems that she managed to establish herself as sovereign after the latter's death and was designated as Pharaoh. Her fate wanted her reign to be short and turbulent from the beginning, Hatshepsut instead inherited a rich and powerful Egypt, in the midst of its wealth and her splendor.
Hatshepsut's eldest daughter was Neferura , had with Thutmosis II (her half-brother, son of Thutmosis I and a secondary wife) the daughter of the two is known on the attestations as "wife of the God", so she was probably royal wife of Thutmosis III, stepson of Hatshepsut; the latter was appointed regent of Thutmosis III, still too young to take care of Egypt autonomously and to carry out the task designated for him; it was during this co-regency that he was married to Neferura. The latter died young and vanished from the attestations, her mother's kingdom suffered a severe blow.
As ruler, Hatshepsut undertook a major construction project, expanding the sites used by Thutmosis I and II before her:Kom Ombo, Hierakompolis, Elefantina are just some of these, both she and Thutmosis III have also left many remains in Nubia but the place that received the most attention from the queen was undoubtedly Thebes; Karnak temple grew in beauty under her supervision.
As ruler, Hatshepsut was buried in the Valley of the Kings ( KV20 ) which was initially built for Thutmosis I and later modified by her to be able to rest next to her father:the KV20 was enlarged, a burial chamber was added and the pharaoh was moved to a sarcophagus initially created for her daughter.
During the reign of his nephew Thutmosis III, the pharaoh was translated into a new tomb, the KV38, with a new grave goods, and it is supposed that Hatshepsut moved to the KV60 at the same time:even if only initially, it seems therefore that the queen's wish to be buried next to her father was granted.
In Deir el Bahri, in the Theban necropolis, a site used as a hiding place was unearthed ( DB320, a royal cachette , in which more than 50 mummies of sovereigns, queens, dignitaries and numerous objects were found that are part of their funerary objects) in which the remains of Hatshepsut's grave goods were also preserved, including a casket for canopic jars containing a spleen (or liver) and a molar with only root part.
The mummy of Hatshepsut was born in 1903 on the discovery of Howard Carter , who found her next to another woman, identified as her nurse, Sitra, originally occupant of the KV60. The recognition was not confirmed until 2007, when Dr. Zahi Hawass with careful observation, research and comparison of the findings, he noticed a detail:the molar present in the casket found in the royal cachette was perfectly compatible with the teeth of the mummy in KV60, which had a missing tooth and the root still inserted in the gum.
Not to be overlooked was the end of this powerful and charismatic queen:after her death (probably due to natural causes, perhaps due to illness, in correlation with the abuse of a skin ointment with carcinogenic ingredients) underwent Damnatio Memoriae : condemned to oblivion , most of his works were destroyed or defaced, he even tried to wall his obelisk in Karnak (the second tallest obelisk in the world, more than 29 meters, weighing about 323 tons) his name was removed from the inscriptions leaving only the outline of the cartouches. But then, why do we have so many artifacts and such a rich documentation about her? And who was to inflict such a fate on her? Was it Thutmosis III, due to the usurpation of his throne for over twenty years? Or it was the fault of Amenhotep II (son of Thutmosis III and his younger wife Merira Hatshepsut) due to the uncertainty of his right to reign, not being the son of a Great Royal Bride? We know that after he ascended the throne, he left no lists of names of his wives. We do not know the identity of his "great royal bride" and, believing that the women under that office had reached too much influence, he depowered the office.
The data are uncertain:they both had their reasons, not c 'it is doubtful that the destruction of documents began during the reign of Thutmosis III just as there is no doubt that Amenhotep II was a great promoter of the Damnatio Memoriae inflicted on Hatshepsut.
It is curious, however, to think that Thutmosis III, one of the greatest Pharaohs in history, remembered as a great undefeated warrior, as well as a prominent and successful personality in numerous fields, had allowed Hatshepsut to usurp him the throne for over twenty years without doing anything about it, without any coup, "taking revenge" simply by inflicting a Damnatio Memoriae ... (badly done, too!) which gives the impression that it does not want to cancel quite the memory.
Finally, a little curiosity about Hatshepsut that requires a step back in time not many years ago:the Van Houten spouses (Dutch astronomers) formed a research group together with the American astronomer Tom Gehrels and discovered several thousand asteroids thanks to a combined work between the observatory of Mount Palomar and the observatory of Leiden. One of their discoveries concerns a main belt asteroid (therefore, roughly, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter) that rotates around its axis every 9 hours. Why are we interested? Well, because when they spotted it, discovered it and photographed it, on September 24, 1960, from the Palomar observatory (San Diego - USA) they decided to call it 2436 Hatshepsu t , (also called 6066 P – L · 1963 DL1978 YA1) precisely in honor of the powerful Egyptian sovereign of the 18th dynasty.
Probably the two spouses were passionate about history or, at least, this is what is evident in seeing the names assigned to the asteroids they discovered:2435 Horemheb, 2462 Nehalennia, 2663 Miltiades, 2782 Leonidas, Ptah, Apollo are just the names of some of them.
The three astronomers passed away not many years ago (2002, 2011, 2015) and, to each of them, an asteroid that bears their name has been dedicated.
Bibliography:
- The Complete Valley of the Kings:Tombs and Treasures of Egypt's Greatest Pharaohs (Richard H. Wilkinson, Nicholas Reeves) pg. 75 + 91-103
-The Oxford Guide of Ancient Egypt (Ian Shawn) pg. 237 - 243
-Archaeology of Ancient Egypt (Kathryn A. Bard) pg. 210/211/212