The Woman Who Would Be King
Page 32
32. A poorly preserved sandstone statue of a small adult King Hatshepsut sitting on the lap of her wet nurse, Satre, also known as Inet, was placed in her funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri after Satre’s death. The statue is currently in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum (JdÉ 56264) and was found by Winlock during excavations at Deir el-Bahri. See Herbert E. Winlock, “The Museum’s Excavation at Thebes,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27, no. 3 (1932). Amazingly, the inscription on an ostracon in the Ambras Collection in Vienna matches the broken text on the statue, allowing a better understanding of the piece. Winlock translated it as follows: “May the king Maatkare [Hatshepsut] and Osiris, first of the Westerners, [the great god] Lord of Abydos, be gracious and give a mortuary offering [of cakes and beer, beef and fowl, and everything] good and pure, and the sweet breath of the north wind to the spirit of the chief nurse who suckled the Mistress of the Two Lands, Sit-Re, called Yen [Inet], justified.”
One of the bodies found in the undecorated KV 60 may represent Hatshepsut’s wet nurse. Two bodies were found in KV 60, one body in a coffin, another on the floor. The coffin holding the body was inscribed with the name of In, or Inet, and it seems possible that the wet nurse was given the privilege of burial in the Valley of the Kings by Hatshepsut.
33. Evidence for infant mortality rates is spotty. For estimated ages at death of individuals from the predynastic cemetery of Naga ed Deir, see P. V. Podzorski, Their Bones Shall Not Perish: An Examination of Predynastic Human Skeletal Remains from Naga-ed-Der in Egypt (New Malden, UK: SIA Publishing, 1990). Also see Janssen and Janssen, Growing Up in Ancient Egypt.
34. See the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus published by F. L. Griffith and W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Petrie Papyri: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob (Principally of the Middle Kingdom) (London: B. Quaritch, 1898). For more specific information about how women aided conception and pregnancy in New Kingdom, see Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina, 168–82.
35. Later Ramesside texts from western Thebes indicate that fertility was the man’s responsibility. See Toivari-Viitala, Women at Deir el-Medina, 161. For ideological notions of fertility in ancient Egypt, see Ann Macy Roth, “Father Earth, Mother Sky: Ancient Egyptian Beliefs About Conception and Fertility,” in Reading the Body: Representations and Remains in the Archaeological Record, ed. Alison E. Rautman, Regendering the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).
36. Most Egyptologists see Neferubity as a daughter of Ahmes, making her Hatshepsut’s full sister. See Troy, Patterns of Queenship, 164; Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 231; and Dodson and Hilton, Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, 132.
37. Neferubity would later be depicted in the Amen sanctuary of Hatshepsut’s Temple of Millions of Years at Deir el-Bahri, a great honor and evidence of their bond.
Chapter Two: A Place of Her Own
1. Wadjmose and Amenmose appear in the tomb of Paheri at el-Kab, because the official Paheri acted as tutor for the princes; see J. J. Tylor and F. L. Griffith, The Tomb of Paheri at El Kab (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1894), 11. Amazingly, we don’t know who was the mother of these sons, and Egyptologists’ opinions are divided among Ahmes, Mutnofret, and a third wife, perhaps one who was married to Thutmose in his youth. Not knowing the full parentage of a prince is not surprising. Given Egypt’s patriarchal system, a prince’s masculine parent was the most essential part of his creation to document formally, and his connection with his mother might have only been stressed upon his succession to the throne, as an honor to her. Some historians believe that Amenmose was actually one of Thutmose I’s sons from his first marriage, because by the fourth year of his father’s reign Amenmose had already been named as a general in the army on a broken naos shrine that documents his hunting activities on the Giza plateau—unlikely activities for a three-year-old child (now in the Louvre, accession no. E 8074). However, the title of Great General of the Army was also used to designate the crown prince in ancient Egypt, so why not use it for a three-year-old Amenmose if he was the chosen heir to the throne? The noas also labels him as the king’s eldest son. For more on this discussion, see Christiane Zivie-Coche, Giza au deuxième millénaire: Bibliothèque d’étude (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1976), 52–55, plate 4; Dodson and Hilton, Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, 130; and Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 230–31.
2. Hatshepsut’s sister was later memorialized at Deir el-Bahri in the Amen sanctuary. See Édouard Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari, vol. 5, The Upper Court and Sanctuary (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1895), Plates CXIX–CL.
3. This palace was built by Thutmose I at right angles to the Karnak Temple entrance on the north side. See Blyth, Karnak, 65–66, and David O’Connor, “Thutmose III: An Enigmatic Pharaoh,” in Cline and O’Connor, Thutmose III: A New Biography, 18.
4. We learn about this moment from an autobiography recorded in the tomb of the official Ahmose son of Ibana at el-Kab. After the battle, “his Majesty sailed northward, all countries in his grasp, with that defeated Nubian bowman being hanged head down at the [front] of the [boat] of his Majesty, and landed at Karnak.” This translation is based on Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 234. Bryan identifies the bowman with the leader of the Kerma insurrection. For the text of Ahmose son of Ibana, see Kurt Sethe, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Band 1, ed. Georg Steindorff, Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums 4 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1906), 1–13.
5. For the inscription from Hagr el-Merwa, see two works by Vivian W. Davies: “Kurgus 2002: The Inscriptions and Rock-Drawings,” Sudan and Nubia 7 (2003): 55–57, and “Egypt and Nubia: Conflict with the Kingdom of Kush,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 52.
6. Although in English it is better to differentiate between “nurse” and “tutor,” in ancient Egyptian the word was almost the same: mena for “tutor” and menat for “nurse.” Both had the breast determinative, and both were associated with the idea of nursing, or feeding a baby nourishment from the breast. Conceptually, this nourishment could take the form of education and support, and thus it could be provided by a male nurse as well as a female. For more on this topic, see Catharine H. Roehrig, “The Eighteenth Dynasty Titles Royal Nurse (mn’t nswt), Royal Tutor (mn’ nswt), and Foster Brother/Sister of the Lord of the Two Lands (sn/snt mn’ n nb t3wy)” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1990).
7. Hatshepsut’s position as God’s Wife probably predated the reign of Thutmose II; in “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period,” 236–37, Bryan states: “A stele of Thutmose II’s reign shows the king followed by Ahmose and Hatshepsut. Apparently the latter was already ‘god’s wife of Amun’ in the reign of Thutmose I, following Ahmose-Nefertari’s death.” Hatshepsut was definitely God’s Wife of Amen and queen during the reign of Thutmose II, according to remains of a limestone structure from Karnak that is now in the Open Air Museum in Luxor, showing her with her daughter Nefrure behind her. See Betsy M. Bryan, “In Women Good and Bad Fortune Are on Earth: Status and Roles of Women in Egyptian Culture,” in Capel and Markoe, Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, 31–32, and Luc Gabolde, Monuments décorés en bas relief aux noms de Thoutmosis II et Hatchepsout à Karnak, Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, t. 123 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2005). Some Egyptologists think that Hatshepsut was not God’s Wife of Amen until as late as Thutmose III; see Dmitri Laboury, “How and Why Did Hatshepsut Invent the Image of Her Royal Power?” in Theban Symposium: Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut, Occasional Proceedings of the Theban Workshop, ed. José M. Galán, Betsy M. Bryan, and Peter F. Dorman (Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, forthcoming). However, Bryan thinks it is quite possible that Hatshepsut took on this priestess role as early as her father’s reign because Ahmes-Nefertari and Merytamen, the previous God’s Wives of
Amen, died during the reign of Thutmose I and were likely replaced by Hatshepsut. If we follow the idea that the reigning king had political motivations to place one of his closest female blood relatives in the position, Hatshepsut would have been the ideal candidate. Furthermore, Hatshepsut was probably just old enough to be trained by Ahmes-Nefertari before she was officially placed. Hatshepsut was therefore the first member of the Thutmoside family to act as God’s Wife. See Troy, Patterns of Queenship, 91–114.
8. Some Egyptologists deny actual sexual manipulation of sacred statuary by human hands, concluding that only verbalization was necessary to evoke sexual movements and subsequent creative actions. If we look at the many surviving texts about these divine transformations meant to occur in Egyptian temple spaces, it seems more appropriate to take the Egyptians at their word and understand titles like God’s Hand or God’s Wife literally rather than figuratively. The actual mechanisms for such sacred sexual rites remain, as we would expect, veiled.
9. Bryan, “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III”; JJ Shirley, “Viceroys, Viziers and the Amun Precinct: The Power of Hereditary and Strategic Marriage in the Early 18th Dynasty,” Journal of Egyptian History 3.1 (2010): 73–113.
10. Egyptologists once connected the God’s Wife of Amen to a kind of heiress system, in that the God’s Wife produced the future kings. But for sound refutation, see Robins, “Critical Examination of the Theory That the Right to the Throne of Ancient Egypt Passed Through the Female Line in the 18th Dynasty,” Göttinger Miszellen 62 (1983).
11. If Ahmes-Nefertari was grandmother to Hatshepsut through her mother, the choice of Hatshepsut to be God’s Wife was likely influenced by her Ahmoside family line. See Bryan, “Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period.”
12. For this text, “The Contendings of Horus and Seth,” see Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 2:197–99.
13. Ibid., 27. This text comes from one of Hatshepsut’s later obelisks, which is still standing at Karnak Temple.
14. Zivie-Coche, Giza au deuxième millénaire, 52–55, plate 4. There is even still some disagreement about the parentage of Amenmose and doubt that he was even a son of Thutmose I. See H. Hohneck, “Hatte Thutmosis I wirklich einen Sohn namens Amenmose?,” Göttinger Miszellen 210 (2006): 59–68.
15. Thutmose IV, who attained the throne by bypassing his elder brothers, mutilating their monuments, and publicly ascribing his accession to the favor of a god, is one Eighteenth Dynasty exception. See Betsy Bryan, The Reign of Thutmose IV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
16. Wadjmose appears in a memorial chapel near the Ramesseum at Thebes (B. Porter and R. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egypt: Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, 2nd ed. [revised by J. Malek from 1974 onward], Oxford: Griffith Institute, 444–46) and in the tomb of Paheri, a court official buried at El Kab, as a little boy on his tutor Itruri’s lap (Tylor and Griffith, Tomb of Paheri at El Kab).
17. Even if marriage was imminent, there is no evidence of a betrothal to seal the deal. Both parties ostensibly waited until they were sexually ready and able. For instance, Ann Macy Roth suggests that Nefrure could not be married to Thutmose III at his accession, when Hatshepsut would have needed this link most, because both were too young (“Models of Authority: Hatshepsut’s Predecessors in Power,” 13).
18. For more on Hatshepsut’s depictions as God’s Wife of Amen, see Christina Gil Paneque, “The Official Image of Hatshepsut During the Regency: A Political Approximation to the Office of God’s Wife,” Trabajos de Egiptologa 2 (2003): 83–98.
19. For more on the obelisks in Karnak Temple, see the reconstructions on the UCLA Digital Karnak website at http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/archive/query?type=obelisk.
20. See two works by Aidan Dodson: “The Burials of Ahmose I,” in Thebes and Beyond: Studies in Honour of Kent R. Weeks, ed. Zahi Hawass and Salima Ikram (Cairo: Conseil Supréme des Antiquités, 2010), 25–33, and “On the Burials and Reburials of Ahmose I and Amenhotep I,” Göttinger Miszellen 238 (2013): 19–24.
21. For a discussion of Thutmose I’s tomb, see J. Romer, “Tuthmosis I and the Bibân el-Molûk: Some Problems of Attribution,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 60 (1974): 119–33; Roehrig, “Building Activities of Thutmose III,” 246; Catharine H. Roehrig, “The Two Tombs of Hatshepsut,” in Roehrig, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, 184–86.
22. This is from an inscription in the tomb chapel of Ineni. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 2, The Eighteenth Dynasty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1906), 38.
Chapter Three: King’s Great Wife
1. There is disagreement about this funerary temple: was it built specifically for the sons, or were the sons added to the king’s funerary temple later? See the two reports by G. Lecuyot and A. M. Loyrette, “La Chapelle de Ouadjmès: Rapport préliminaire I,” Memnonia 6 (1995): 85–93 and “La Chapelle de Ouadjmès: Rapport préliminaire II,” Memnonia 7 (1996): 111–22.
2. The family maintained their memory as the two princes were revered in later generations as part of Theban ancestor cults, including their insertion into the 19th Dynasty ancestor list preserved in the Theban craftsman Khabekhnet’s tomb at Deir el-Medina. See Dorman, “Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 40. For the text from Theban Tomb 2 of Khabekhnet, see Kenneth Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions: Historical and Biographical, 8 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969–90), 3:806–7.
3. The mummy identified as Thutmose II was just over 5 feet 6 inches tall (168 centimeters) and had extremely good teeth, a sign that he died young. See G. Elliot Smith, The Royal Mummies, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, nos. 61051–61100 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1912), 28–30. Determining the age of ancient remains is problematic, because modern aging criteria may not be fully applicable to ancient times; however, teeth-wear patterns present useful criteria. See T. Molleson and M. Cox, The Spitalfields Project, vol. 2, The Anthropology: The Middling Sort (York, UK: Council for British Archaeology, 1993), 169. Even though mummy research usually focuses on the cause of death, rather than overall health, or lack thereof, thus limiting results for social studies, the mummy of Thutmose II shows evidence for a life plagued by physical ailments.
4. There is disagreement about whether Ahmes served as Thutmose II’s regent, but her placement on Egypt’s monuments does suggest that she, instead of the boy’s mother, was the highly placed woman who acted as regent over all official and administrative management. For a stela of Thutmose II with his wife Hatshepsut and his mother-in-law Ahmes, see the Berlin stela with accession number 15699 in D. Wildung, “Zwei Stelen aus Hatschepsuts Frühzeit,” in Festschrift zum 150 jährigen Bestehen des Berliner ägyptischen Museums (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1974), 255–68, plate 34; also see Troy, Patterns of Queenship, 110. It is still not clear why Mutnofret did not act as regent for her young son, given her patrician origins. Was she politically disconnected even though she was a King’s Daughter?
5. Some Egyptologists suggest that Ahmoside elements from the family of Amenhotep I were waiting in the wings to take over the kingship, although there is no hard evidence for such an Ahmoside threat. See in particular Dimitri Laboury, “Royal Portrait and Ideology: Evolution and Signification of the Statuary of Thutmose III,” in Cline and O’Connor, Thutmose III: A New Biography, 266.
6. The relative ages of Hatshepsut and her husband-brother Thutmose II are debated. If Ahmes married Thutmose I first, as expected for the highest-ranking royal wife, then Hatshepsut may have been born before Thutmose II. Mutnofret was a secondary wife, and thus likely married Thutmose I later. And because Thutmose II was positioned lower in the rankings for kingship, we can assume he was a younger brother of not only his older brothers Wadjmose and Amenmose, but also of his sister Hatshepsut. Of course, if Thutmose I married Ahmes before his accession (for which there is no evidence), none of this accounting can stand. Or, if Mutnof
ret was married to Thutmose I before his accession, as his primary wife before he became king (for which there is also no evidence), then Thutmose II may have been older than Hatshepsut. See Dorman, “The Early Reign of Thutmose III,” 59n7.
7. The most well-known monument showing Thutmose II with his wife Hatshepsut and his mother-in-law Ahmes is a stela from ancient Thebes.
8. For monuments from Hatshepsut’s time as queen and regent, see Gabolde, Monuments décorés en bas relief, and Troy, Patterns of Queenship, 108–14.
9. For a digital reconstruction of this festival court, see the UCLA Digital Karnak website at http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/feature/PylonAndFestivalCourtOfThutmoseII.
10. Senenmut’s beginnings were humble. His father had no title of significance, and his mother had a rich burial only because by the time of her death Senenmut had attained a high enough status to bury his mother with costly goods. See Peter F. Dorman, The Monuments of Senenmut: Problems in Historical Methodology (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1988).
11. The titles are Overseer of the King’s Great House and Overseer of the House of the King’s Great Wife; see ibid.
12. Bryan demonstrates how these bureaucrats benefited from their positions in “Administration in the Reign of Thutmose III.”
13. Some Egyptologists suggest that he started his professional life in the army, an institution known to allow quick changes in social status, but there is little evidence for this conclusion. Theban Tomb 71 of Senenmut mentions gold armbands in association with battle or plunder, but this provides no evidence that he himself served in the army. Senenmut’s titles are administrative, and none of his plentiful monuments mention any affiliation with the army. See Dorman, Monuments of Senenmut, 7–13.