Queen Hatshepsut is considered the most famous queen in ancient Egypt, King Thutmose’s daughter the first, and the principal wife, Queen Ahmose.
Hatshepsut enjoyed a powerful personality and was so ambitious for the throne. After her father’s death, she had a desire to ascend the throne because she is the daughter of a principal queen who bears royal blood, but according to Egyptian tradition, the country’s ruler should be a man, not a woman.
She married her half-brother Thutmose the second to legitimize accession to the throne because thutmose the son is born from a secondary wife called mutnefer.
King Thutmose, the second, was weak in health and ruled Egypt for 15 years. During his life, he got from Hatshepsut two daughters named neferure and merit- ra- Hatshepsut besides. He had another secondary wife isis a son called Thutmose the third. After the death of thutmose the second, his son thutmose the third was married to his half-sister neferure to have the throne.
But the king Thutmose the third was still young, so he was placed under the regency of his aunt, stepmother, and mother-in-law queen Hatshepsut.
Hatshepsut took the chance to dominate the throne by executing specific procedures; she shared the throne with Thutmose, the third, for about three years. She kept under her shadow and declared herself as the sole ruler over Egypt.
To prove her right to the throne, queen Hatshepsut claimed that she is the divine daughter of Amun, the supreme god of Egypt. She invented a story that god Amun had taken the form of her father Thutmose the first and entered her mother Ahmose .he told ahmos that her daughter called Hatshepsut would be Egypt’s queen.
Queen Hatshepsut held royal titles as king of upper & lower Egypt. She also dressed and posed like men, that she represented wearing the nms headdress, the false royal beard, the kilt sndyd.
In her depiction, she was represented with a man’s body, not a woman, and she made for herself sphinxes statues.
According to her reign, she ruled Egypt for around twenty-two years in peace and prosperity. Among her outstanding achievements her commercial expedition to the land of a punt “ till now unknown precisely the location of the land of a punt “ during the ninth year of her reign, she brought lots of products like gold, resins, ebony, black wood, ivory and wild animals including monkeys and baboons.
She also had so many Luxor monuments: her mortuary temple was erected by her architect senmut. She has other buildings in the Karnak temples, the Luxor temple, and the istabl antar.
The archeologists discovered two tombs for queen Hatshepsut, one in the valley of the queens while the second in the valley of the kings.
The death of queen Hatshepsut still a mystery. Even her body hasn’t been discovered. It might be the followers of king Thutmose the third destroyed her monuments. However, it is essential to mention that Thutmose the third didn’t ruin her monuments, but he completed some of her buildings.
The successor kings considered queen Hatshepsut a usurper to the throne, so her name had not been mentioned in many kings’ lists.