Hatchepsut

by Joyce Tyldesley

  Hatchepsut was neither an Agrippina nor an Amazon. As far as we know, violence and bloodshed had no place in her make-up. Hers was a rule dominated by an architect, and the Hapusenebs, Neshis and Djehutys in her following were priests and administrators rather than soldiers.17

  Hatchepsut stands out as one of the great monarchs of Egypt. Though no wars or conquests are recorded in her reign, her triumphs were as great as those of the warrior-kings of Egypt, but they were the triumphs of peace, not war. Her records, as might be expected from a woman, are more intimate and personal than those of a king… This was no conqueror, joying in the lusts of battle, but a strong-souled noble-hearted woman, ruling her country wisely and well.18

  Few historians working in the pre-politically correct 1950s and 1960s, faced with the apparent pacifism of Hatchepsut's reign and the well-documented military activities of Tuthmosis III, were able to resist drawing sweeping conclusions. The two kings, already deadly enemies, were now to be seen as the leaders of two opposing political factions. Hatchepsut the female, with her interest in internal works and foreign trade, belonged to what could be classed as the party of peace. She was supported in her ideas by a party of self-made bureaucrats. Tuthmosis, supported by the traditional male élite including the priesthood of Amen, belonged to the more radical ‘war’ party, his vigorous programme of conquests and expansion being interpreted as a sign that Egypt was attempting to shake off her insular past and become a major world power:

  Our theory then is that there was a choice to be made and that two different parties chose differently, Hatchepsut's faction in terms of the lesser effort of earlier times and Tuthmosis III's faction in terms of a new and major international venture.19

  Old-fashioned egyptologists are not the only ones to have assumed that a woman's natural sensitivity, physical frailty and ability to generate life would naturally lead her to shy away from bloodshed. For a long time this, in a slightly altered form, has been the sincerely held belief of many feminist theorists and historians who view extreme violence and aggression as a purely male phenomenon and who associate the peace movement, now seen as a strength rather than a weakness, with women and motherhood. Woman's ability to create life is often seen as incompatible with the wish to order the death of another human being. Various theories have been put forward to explain the phenomenon of male aggression, ranging from the simple biological (the higher testosterone levels found in men) to the complex psychological (men's need for compensation for their inability to bear children), while Freud suggested that male aggression was the natural result of the sexual rivalry between father and son competing for the love of the mother. Freud went on to deduce from this that men had developed civilizations as a means of compensating for the suppression of their childhood sexual instincts, while the feminist theorist Naomi Wolf, discussing the ‘beauty myth’ which she sees as ensnaring modern women, has developed this argument a stage further by suggesting that as ‘Freud believed that the repression of the libido made civilization; civilization depends at the moment on the repression of the female libido…’20

  However, the idea that a woman would automatically be less aggressive than a man may appear strange to those who have lived under some of the world's most recent female rulers. Neither Mrs Golda Meir nor Mrs Indira Gandhi was known for her soft and passive femininity while the track record of the ‘Iron Lady’, Margaret Thatcher, speaks for itself. Mrs Thatcher, following a tradition established by Hatchepsut and continued by Elizabeth I, even dressed as a soldier during an official visit to Northern Ireland, a gesture which was presumably intended to express solidarity with the troops as she herself had no intention of taking up arms and fighting on the streets of Belfast. It could almost be argued on this admittedly very small sample that modern women who obtain positions of power normally reserved for men are more and not less likely to resort to military action, particularly if they feel that they still have something to prove. There is certainly nothing in Hatchepsut's character to suggest that she would be frightened of taking the military initiative as and when necessary.

  A quick survey of the prominent women of history tends to confirm that being female is not necessarily a bar to taking decisive military action. Societies in general may have prevented their women from fighting but there have been some notable exceptions. Hippolyta, Penthesilea and the other single-breasted warrior Amazons may be dismissed as a legend invented to frighten men but Boadicea, Zenobia of Palmyra and Joan of Arc, real women living in societies which would not traditionally allow females to enlist, all donned masculine battle dress to lead their male soldiers into action. Other queens, including Elizabeth I as she rallied the English fleet at Tilbury, wore the battle dress to show their commitment to the cause but commanded from afar, while Cleopatra, who participated peripherally in the battle of Actium before fleeing ‘true to her nature as a woman and an Egyptian’21 never, as far as we are aware, dressed as an Egyptian soldier. All these women seem to have been instinctively aware that the very presence of a fragile woman on the field of battle, far from discouraging the troops, may actually bring out feelings of latent gallantry and thereby inspire their soldiers to greater effort. Antonia Fraser, who dubs this type of woman a ‘Warrior Queen’, notes that:

  … a Warrior Queen – or female ruler – has often provided the focus for what a country afterwards perceived to have been its golden age; beyond the obvious example (to the English) of Queen Elizabeth I, one might cite the twelfth-century Queen Tamara of Georgia, or the fifteenth-century Isabella of Spain.22

  The woman who takes up arms on behalf of her country, such as Marianne of France, is often seen as the ultimate patriot. At the same time the enemy who is forced to fight against a woman may be shamed by his unchivalrous actions. He is caught in a classic ‘no-win’ situation; he can never achieve a great victory by defeating a mere woman, while a lost battle could lead to open ridicule by his male contemporaries.

  Evidence is now growing to suggest that Hatchepsut's military prowess has been seriously underestimated due to the selective nature of the archaeological evidence which has been compounded by preconceived notions of feminine pacifism. Egyptologists have assumed that Hatchepsut did not fight, and have become blind to the evidence that, in fact, she did. As has already been noted, ancient battles do not necessarily have a great impact on their immediate environment, and we are dependent upon the preservation of monumental or textual evidence for confirmation that any skirmish took place. Occasionally we may learn of a great battle by chance from a single inscription, and it will already have been noticed that Ahmose's war of liberation, which freed Egypt from Hyksos rule, is only actually recorded in its full detail in the tomb of Ahmose, son of Ibana. As so many of Hatchepsut's texts were defaced, amended or erased after her death, it is entirely possible that her war record is incomplete. Furthermore, Hatchepsut's reign, falling between the reigns of two of the greatest generals Egypt was ever to know (Tuthmosis I and Tuthmosis III), is bound to suffer in any immediate comparison. A more realistic comparison, say with the reign of Tuthmosis II, shows that Hatchepsut's reign was not at all unusual. It is almost certainly a mistake based on hindsight to see the Asiatic empire as a master-plan devised by Tuthmosis I, hindered by Tuthmosis II (who may be excused on the grounds of ill-health) and Hatchepsut and finally brought to fruition by Tuthmosis III.

  The Deir el-Bahri mortuary temple, Djeser-Djeseru, provides us with evidence for defensive military activity during Hatchepsut's reign. By the late nineteenth century Naville had uncovered enough references to battles to convince him that Hatchepsut had embarked on the now customary series of campaigns against her vassals to the south and east. These subjects, the traditional enemies of Egypt, almost invariably viewed any change of pharaoh as an opportunity to rebel against their overlords, while the pharaohs themselves seem to have almost welcomed these minor insurrections as a means of proving their military might:

  The fragments and inscriptions found in the course of the excavat
ions at Deir el-Bahri show that during Hatchepsut's reign wars were waged against the Ethiopians, and probably also against the Asiatics. Among these wars which the queen considered the most glorious, and which she desired to be recorded on the walls of the temple erected as a monument to her high deeds, was the campaign against the nations of the Upper Nile.23

  Blocks originally sited on the eastern colonnade show the Nubian god Dedwen leading a series of captive southern towns towards the victorious Hatchepsut, each town being represented by a name written in a crenellated cartouche and topped by an obviously African head. The towns all belong to the land of Cush (Nubia). Elsewhere in the temple, Hatchepsut is portrayed as a sphinx, a human-headed crouching lion crushing the traditional enemies of Egypt. There is also a written, but unfortunately badly damaged, description of a Nubian campaign in which Hatchepsut appears to be claiming to have emulated the deeds of her revered father:

  … as was done by her victorious father, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Aakheperkare [Tuthmosis I] who seized all lands… a slaughter was made among them, the number [of dead] being unknown; their hands were cut off… she overthrew [gap in text] the gods [gap in text]…24

  The evidence from the Deir el-Bahri temple is a mixture of official pronouncements and conventional scenes, and it is therefore possible that the Nubian campaigns may be battles which Hatchepsut has ‘borrowed’ from earlier pharaohs, possibly her father. Such borrowing or usurping, disgraceful cheating to modern eyes, would have been entirely in keeping with Egyptian tradition which stated that the pharaoh had to be seen to defeat the enemies of Egypt; those who did not actually fight simply invented or borrowed victories which, as they depicted them, became real through the power of art and the written word. This means that a formal inscription carved by a king of Egypt and unsupported by independent collaborative evidence can never be taken as the historical truth. However, an unofficial graffito recovered from the Upper Egyptian island of Sehel (Aswan), and written on behalf of a man named Ti who served under both Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III, confirms that there was indeed some fighting in the south during Hatchepsut's reign:

  The Hereditary Prince and Governor, Treasurer of the King of Lower Egypt, the Sole Friend, Chief Treasurer, the one concerned with the booty, Ti. He says: ‘I followed the good god, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Maatkare, may she live! I saw him [i.e. Hatchepsut] overthrowing the Nubian nomads, their chiefs being brought to him as prisoners. I saw him destroying the land of Nubia while I was in the following of His Majesty…’25

  Ti goes further than the Deir el-Bahri evidence in suggesting that Hatchepsut was actually present during the fighting in Nubia. He himself was present at the battle not as a soldier, but as a bureaucrat. Further confirmatory evidence for at least one Nubian campaign comes from the tomb of Senenmut, where a badly damaged and disjointed series of inscriptions read ‘I seized…’ and later ‘the land of Nubia’, and from the stela of a man named Djehuty, a witness to the southern fighting, who tells us that he actually saw Hatchepsut on the field of battle, collecting the spoils of war.

  There is less direct evidence for military campaigning to the north-east of Egypt, although again the Deir el-Bahri temple does hint at some skirmishes; in at least one inscription it is said of Hatchepsut that ‘her arrow is amongst the northerners’. However, it is a consideration of the subsequent conquests of Tuthmosis III which provides the best evidence for the maintenance of firm military control over the northeastern territories. When Tuthmosis III eventually became sole ruler of Egypt, the client states in Syria and Palestine seized the traditional opportunity to rebel, a reaction which suggests that the death of Hatchepsut may have been viewed as a potential weakening rather than strengthening of Egypt's power in the Levant. The Egyptian army, however, had been properly maintained, the soldiers were ready, the correct administration was in place, and Tuthmosis was able to launch an immediate and successful counter-attack. Tuthmosis, in his role as head of the army throughout the latter part of the co-regency, had already conducted at least one successful campaign in Palestine, during which he had captured the strategically important town of Gaza; by Year 23, the first year of Tuthmosis solo reign, Gaza is described as ‘the town which the ruler had taken’. Tuthmosis went on to become one of Egypt's most successful generals, pushing back the eastern and southern boundaries of the Egyptian Empire until Egypt became without doubt the dominant force in the Mediterranean world. Would his career have been so brilliant had it not been preceded by the reign of Hatchepsut?26

  Hatchepsut's military policy is perhaps best described as one of unobtrusive control; active defence rather than deliberate offence. While either unwilling or unable to actually expand Egypt's sphere of influence in the near east, she was certainly prepared to fight to maintain the borders of her country. Her military record is in fact stronger than that of Tuthmosis II, who did not lead his campaigns in person, and far more impressive than that of Akhenaten, a male king who showed an extreme reluctance to protect his own interests even though he received a stream of increasingly desperate letters from his Levantine vassals begging him for military assistance. It would certainly be very unfair to draw a direct comparison between the campaigns of Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis III and Hatchepsut, and then criticize the latter for not adopting a more aggressive stance. It is, in fact, Tuthmosis III who is unusual in this line-up; all the other 18th Dynasty pharaohs embarked on the customary campaigns towards the beginning of their reigns, but only Tuthmosis III made fighting his life's work. After all, although a good military record was a desirable aspect of kingship, not all kings could be lucky enough to participate in a decisive military campaign. The fact that Hatchepsut did not need to fight may actually be taken as an indication of strength rather than weakness. The most successful 18th Dynasty monarch, Amenhotep III, a king who ruled over Egypt at a time of unprecedented prosperity, certainly had a less than impressive war record. This was not through personal cowardice or adherence to a deliberate policy of peace; Amenhotep III did not fight because he did not need to. Throughout his rule Egypt remained the greatest power in the Mediterranean world and, rather than rebel, Egypt's vassals and neighbours stood in awe.

  We have ample evidence to show that Hatchepsut's wider foreign policy should be classed as one of adventurous trade and exploration. Her famous expedition to Punt, clearly one of the highlights of her reign, should not be seen as an isolated event but as the climax of a series of trading missions which included visits to Phoenicia to collect the wood which Egypt so badly needed to build her ships, and the exploitation of the copper and turquoise mines in Sinai which is attested by stelae and inscriptions at the Wadi Maghara and Serabit el-Khadim. All of these missions were standard indications of a successful rule, comparable to the exploits of the great pharaohs of the past, and as such were recorded with pride on the walls of the Speos Artemidos temple, Middle Egypt:

  Roshawet [Sinai] and Iuu [now unknown] have not remained hidden from my august person, and Punt overflows for me on the fields, its trees bearing fresh myrrh. The roads that were blocked on both sides are now trodden. My army, which was unequipped, has become possessed of riches since I arose as king.27

  Trade, throughout the 18th Dynasty, was a matter of obtaining luxurious imports rather than, as in the modern western world, the problem of finding markets for exported Egyptian surpluses. The mysterious and exotic Punt, the ‘land of the god’, had been known since Old Kingdom times as a source of such desirable commodities as myrrh, incense, ebony, ivory, gold and even dancing pygmies, who were particularly prized at the Egyptian court:

  You said in your dispatch that you have bought a dwarf of the god's dances… like the dwarf whom the god's treasurer Bawerded brought from Punt in the time of King Isesi… Come northward to the residence at once! Hurry, and bring with you this dwarf… If he goes down into a boat with you, choose trusty men to be beside him on both sides of the boat in case he falls overboard into the water. If he lies down to sleep at night, choose
trusty men to be beside him in his tent. Inspect him ten times during the night. My Majesty longs to see this dwarf more than the spoils of the mining country and of Punt.28

  Expeditions to Punt had been a feature of several Middle Kingdom reigns, and the trading missions of Mentuhotep III, Senwosret I and Amenemhat II had all successfully navigated their way to and from this fabulous land. The exact location of Punt is now a mystery, although the flora and fauna depicted in the reliefs indicate that it must have been an African country, probably situated somewhere along the Eritrean/Ethiopian coast between latitudes 17°N and 12°N. Punt could therefore be reached via the Red Sea port of Quseir which lay at the end of an arduous trek along the desert road from Coptos. The Egyptians, well accustomed to sailing up and down the Nile, were not particularly well versed in the hazards of sea travel, and the long voyage to Punt must have seemed something akin to a journey to the moon for present-day explorers. However, the rewards of such a journey clearly outweighed the risks, and missions to Punt continued during the reigns of Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep III. The tradition of trading with Punt died out during the 20th Dynasty, and by the end of the dynastic period Punt had become an unreal and fabulous land of myths and legends.

  We are told that it was actually Amen, not Hatchepsut, who took the decision to send an expedition to Punt during regnal Year 9, and that the king of the gods gave his personal guarantee that the mission would be successful:

  Said by Amen, the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands: ‘Come, come in peace my daughter, the graceful, who art in my heart, King Maatkare… I will give thee Punt, the whole of it… I will lead [your soldiers] by land and by water, on mysterious shores which join the harbours of incense, the sacred territory of the divine land, my abode of pleasure… They will take incense as much as they like. They will load their ships to the satisfaction of their hearts with trees of green [that is, fresh] incense, and all the good things of the land.29