Artistic Depictions of Hatshepsut in Ancient Egyptian Art

The name “Hatshepsut,” to those who are at least vaguely familiar with it, evokes immediately a distinct image of the female pharaoh who apparently dressed as a man. It is tempting for those who know very little to be confused by her artistic depictions and jump to conclusions about Hatshepsut, namely, that she cross-dressed in order to fool her subjects and assume a position forbidden to women, or that she was a “wicked stepmother” to her co-regent, Thutmose III. Rather than hiding her gender, however, Hatshepsut sought to prove that a woman could be king, embodying an effective dual identity by adopting the male characteristics of a pharaoh in her artistic representations in order to affirm her kingliness, while deliberately retaining her female titles and perhaps hoping that future women would follow her example.

Politically active queens did exist during the earliest years of the Old Kingdom, often as the “King’s Mother.” Many male pharaohs died while their sons were very young, especially from assassination, so power was given to the mother of the heir who could act as a regent until her son became old enough to rule. Unfortunately, royal women lost much of their power after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and were confined to more traditional domestic roles until the 18th dynasty.

The greater political stability brought by the unification is thought to have extended the lifespans of pharaohs and allowed their sons to mature before inheriting the throne, diminishing the importance of the King’s Mother. With the political unrest of the 17th dynasty, then, the freedoms and powers of women in the Theban royal family reemerged as male leaders busied themselves with military campaigns against the Hyksos who occupied northern Egypt. But as a queen regent, a woman could still never achieve equal or greater power than the pharaoh; not without becoming pharaoh herself.

Before Hatshepsut there had been only a few women who had served as true kings. To be a king in Egypt was to be recognized as an earthly manifestation of the god Horus, so kings were male whenever possible. Unfortunately, little intact information is available regarding the female kings who preceded Hatshepsut other than that they assumed the kingship most likely due to a lack of a male heir to the throne.

The only female king proven to exist was Sobeknofru (or Nefrusobek), who was made the last king of the 12th dynasty following her brother’s death in an attempt to continue the reign of the royal family, the failure of which eventually led to the collapse of the unified Egyptian kingdom with the 13th dynasty. Sobeknofru adopted the male role of pharaoh and was depicted with some male characteristics, while she feminized her royal titles and called herself “Female Horus” and “Daughter of Re.” Despite Sobeknofru’s short and ineffective tenure as pharaoh, it is likely that her determination to fulfill the male role of pharaoh without completely abandoning her femininity influenced Hatshepsut’s identity strongly.

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose, whose ancestors, the Thebans, had defeated the Hyksos and reunified Egypt. Thutmose I also had a son, Thutmose II, by another queen, Mutnofret. Thutmose II and Hatshepsut were married and Thutmose II became pharaoh upon Thutmose I’s death, but because Hatshepsut’s mother was of royal descent and Thutmose II’s mother was not, Hatshepsut felt that she deserved to be pharaoh much more than he did. Thutmose II had a son, Thutmose III, by another woman and died when Thutmose III was a young child, clearing the way for Hatshepsut to act as his regent.

There is little agreement as to exactly what year Hatshepsut was made king or why, but she is thought to have been king from roughly 1473 BCE until she died around 1458 BCE. Arthur Weigall writes that Hatshepsut was “backed by a group of nobles” who likely shared her sentiment that her royal descent gave her a strong claim to the throne, and Miriam Ma’At-Ka-Re Monges views Hatshepsut’s successful wresting of power from Thutmose III as reflecting the prominent African tradition of matrilineal succession. Once an Egyptian king was coronated, they were never peacefully removed from office, which forced Thutmose III to rule in co-regency with Hatshepsut when he finally grew old enough to become pharaoh.

The term “co-regency” that is often used to describe the nature of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III’s partnership is somewhat misleading, however, as the power dynamic between the two kings was unlike typical co-regencies that had previously existed in Egypt. Normally, an older pharaoh would allow his younger heir to become co-regent in order to teach him how to rule. Since Hatshepsut secured her power in a rather roundabout way, however, this definition hardly applies. Interpretations of Hatshepsut’s co-regency with Thutmose III tend to bounce between two extreme viewpoints, either that Hatshepsut was a power-hungry “wicked stepmother” who actively relegated Thutmose III to a subordinate position, or that she and Thutmose III were more or less equal partners; the latter and more recent position being based on the supposed frequency of the two kings’ portrayal together on monuments.

Dmitri Laboury seeks to debunk this latter position by emphasizing that Hatshepsut consistently stands in front of Thutmose III in all images where the two kings are together, and that images of Hatshepsut are far more numerous than those of Thutmose III during the co-regency, whether the kings are depicted alone or together. It is true that Thutmose III eliminated Hatshepsut’s name from many of her monuments after her death, but it is unclear whether he did this out of revenge or in order to conform to the more conservative attitudes towards women that were reemerging at the time. As both the “wicked stepmother” narrative and the equal co-regency narrative are based on extremely nuanced and sometimes arbitrary interpretations of the same artworks, it is difficult to give a definite statement in favor of one or the other. What is clear, however, is that Hatshepsut possessed the full power of pharaoh and made a distinct effort to immortalize her kingly image.

Hatshepsut’s depictions of herself as both a male king and a female illustrate Hatshepsut’s perception of her own identity as well as the Ancient Egyptians’ cultural expectations about their pharaoh. Given that Hatshepsut is overwhelmingly artistically portrayed as a male king with male clothing and inconsistent pronouns, it was easy for 19th-century archaeologists to assume that she was trying to deceptively present herself as a male to keep her status as pharaoh secure. In Ancient Egypt, Arthur Gilman and George Rawlinson wrote,

She wished to be regarded as a man, assumed male apparel and an artificial beard, and gave herself on many of her monuments the style and title of a king. Her name of Hatasu [sic] she changed into Hatasu-Khnum-Ammon, thus identifying herself with two of the chief Egyptian gods… She took the titles of ‘son of the sun,’ ‘the good god,’ ‘lord of the two lands,’ ‘beloved of Ammon, the protector of kings.’ A curious anomaly appears in some of her inscriptions, where masculine and feminine forms are inextricably mixed up; though spoken of consistently as ‘the king,’ and not ‘the queen,’ yet the personal and possessive pronouns which refer to her are feminine for the most part, while sometimes such perplexing expressions occur as ‘le roi qui est bien aimée par Ammon,’ or ‘His Majesty herself.’

Edouard Naville even went so far as to take Hatshepsut’s consistent male portrayal as evidence that ancient Egypt stubbornly excluded women from government:

The Egyptians were averse the throne being occupied by a woman, otherwise Hatshepsu [sic] would not have been obliged to assume the garb of a man; she would not have disguised her sex under male attire, not omitting the beard. Even long after her reign, when the Dynasty had changed, the kings would not admit that a queen had been one of their predecessors… How strong this feeling was in Hatshepsu’s own time is shown by the fact that she never dared to disregard it in her sculptures, where she never appears as a woman.

Naville is dismissive of the inscriptions that accompany the sculptures and identify Hatshepsut as a female king, arguing that because most Egyptians were illiterate, the inscriptions are not useful in clarifying Hatshepsut’s gender, and he also seems baffled by the “curious mixture of masculine and feminine pronouns” used to refer to Hatshepsut. Interpretations such as these seem to imply that Hatshepsut was trying to purposely conceal her gender from the Egyptians, but she actually adopted male costume in public in accordance with the tradition of Egyptian kings. Because kings were almost always male and viewed as an embodiment of the god Horus, a masculine gender expression was simply part of the pharaonic tradition that Hatshepsut used to reinforce the legitimacy of her kingship and externally affirm her connection to Horus. Hatshepsut then deliberately emphasized her femininity by ensuring that feminine endings were applied to the titles that graced her sculptures, for, according to Roth, acknowledgement of Hatshepsut’s true gender was also crucial for her to fully assume the religious function of the pharaoh:

The Egyptian king was a god on earth, the communicating link between Egyptians and their gods. Representations of the king functioned magically as stand-ins, ensuring the perpetuation of that link. It was thus important for images of Hatshepsut to identify her correctly. Her femininity was an essential part of her identity, and images that showed a fictional, nonexistent man named Hatshepsut would not be effective.

Roth does admit, in line with Naville, that illiterate people observing Hatshepsut’s temple would likely not have realized that she was truly a woman, but the question of whether this confusion would have affected the delivery of their prayers is not answered. Roth offers some theories to address the “mixed” pronouns observed by Gilman, Rawlinson and Naville, noting that feminine titles had also sometimes been applied to depictions of Thutmose I, II and III commissioned by Hatshepsut, perhaps with the intention of establishing feminine pronouns and titles as unisex ones with the expectation that more female pharaohs would follow her.

It is also apparent that Hatshepsut’s portrayal changed over time; she was naturally depicted as female during Thutmose II’s lifetime and while she held the title of queen regent over Thutmose III, but her coronation as king necessitated the shift towards an increasingly more masculine depiction. Earlier pictures of Hatshepsut as a female were later erased and replaced with a male figure so that Hatshepsut’s godly identity as pharaoh was emphasized over her identity as a simple queen.

Hatshepsut sought to further legitimize her divinity in the eyes of her people by depicting her birth and coronation on the walls of her temple at Deir el-Bahari as divine events. In the coronation story, Thutmose I is portrayed as having appointed Hatshepsut as his heir:

Then said His Majesty before [his servants]: This my daughter, Khnumt Amen Hatshepsu, living I put her in my place as she is on my throne, henceforth she will be sitting on the staircase marvelous; she utters her words of command to the rekhyu in all their dwellings of the palace; henceforth she guides you listen to her words, and submit to her commands. Whoever praises her, he will live; but he who speaks evil against Her Majesty, he will die.

The noblemen celebrate Hatshepsut’s coronation, and she is given new royal names, supposedly bestowed by the gods. Afterwards, in a scene akin to a Christian baptism, Hatshepsut is led away by a god named Kheseti, who pours a vessel of water over her head and says “I have purified thee with these waters of all satisfying life, all stability, all health, all joy of heart, to celebrate very many jubilees, like Re, forever.” The god Horus then concludes the ceremony, proclaiming, “Thou hast established thy dignity as king, and appeared upon the Horus-throne.” Hatshepsut’s fictional coronation is meant to indicate that a spiritual rebirth had occurred within her, giving her a divine right to fully rule as king.

Unfortunately, Naville interpreted Hatshepsut’s coronation by Thutmose I as historical fact, perpetuating the misperception that she had had a co-regency with her father, while also attributing Hatshepsut’s kingly ambitions to her father’s influence rather than recognizing her own agency in writing her royal and spiritual stories. If a fantastical coronation wasn’t enough, Hatshepsut again portrayed herself at Deir el-Bahari as a daughter of gods in a mythological story of her birth to further spiritually justify her claim to the throne. This time, Thutmose I is actually an embodiment of the god Amon, and he is encouraged by the god Thoth to father a child through Queen Ahmose. Amon asks the potter god Khnum to sculpt the form of Hatshepsut, and she is brought to life by the god Heket. Echoing Kheseti’s lines from the coronation, Khnum then says of Hatshepsut,

I have come to thee to create thee higher than all the gods. I will give thee all life, all purity, all stability, all joy within me. I will give thee all health, all lands, I will give thee all countries, all mankind. I will give thee all offerings, all abundance. I will give thee to rise on the throne of Horus, like Ra.

According to Naville, the myth of divine conception was already a very old one, but Hatshepsut’s story was unique in that it portrayed a real royal person as being born to gods rather than a fictional, mythological character. Hatshepsut’s birth-myth clearly asserts that she was destined by the gods to be king, and she is portrayed as a young boy but with feminine titles, retaining both her “ritual” (male) and “natural” (female) identities. Even though Hatshepsut’s myths are to us obviously fictional stories, they likely served an important symbolic purpose for her. Whether her subjects believed the myths or not, it at least must have been personally meaningful to Hatshepsut to imagine her father and the gods affirming her as pharaoh.

Hatshepsut’s public presentation and historical legacy was not purposely intended to be confusing or deceptive about her identity. Rather, she sought to demonstrate that the traditional masculinity required of the Egyptian pharaoh was no barrier to a woman who deserved the position and wished to be portrayed as a female who effectively assumed the full role of king.