Egyptian Kings: Expectations
An Egyptian king was expected to perform certain duties to show that he was a proper king who could protect Egypt's interests.
Kings were depicted in Egyptian imagery as males. They generally were shown striding, not standing still, in life. The king wore a short kilt, not the ankle-length sheath dress of a woman. The king (like gods) was shown with characteristic and symbolic crowns. Even old and child kings were shown with a healthy, youthful adult body. Sometimes, kings were represented as sphinxes.
Ritual duties included not just specific parts in religious dramas, rituals, and rites. Kings were also shown hunting and fishing, trading, and carrying out wars and invasions.
Sometimes, kings were portrayed in stories that made clear that gods, especially key gods like Amun, had endorsed the king's rise to power.
The king leading military campaigns, hunting, fishing, performing religious rituals -- these were all part of what in Egyptian theology was necessary for the stability and prosperity of the Two Lands of Egypt.
Hatshepsut Depicted as King
There are many images and inscriptions that showed Hatshepsut as a proper king. Some survived the defacing of her images and name after her death; some have been reconstructed.
At Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri, Hatshepsut's miracle birth is shown. The god Amun came to Hatshepsut's mother in the guise of Thutmose I. This "confirms" that Hatshepsut was destined from her conception to become a king. Across from this depiction is another series of images that portrays Hatshepsut's powers: the trip to the mythical Land of Punt on a trading expedition. Although it likely never happened, Hatshepsut is portrayed in one set of images as leading a military campaign.
In Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, she justified her rule by association with her father, not her husband or stepson. She portrayed herself as more justifiably royal than her husband -- which may have made it seem necessary to her successor, her husband and not her son, to erase such claims to protect the heritage of his own heirs. She also appears in statues as Osiris, which is the god an Egyptian king became after death.
Maatkare
Maat was the personification and principle of truth or justice or order -- what made the world "right." Maat, as the opposite of chaos, was highly valued in Egypt, and was certainly part of the basic conservatism that kept Egypt from changing very much through thousands of years of history.
Hatshepsut took the name Maatkare (Maat-ka-re) as her crown/king name. This name means something like "Maat (right order) is the soul of the god Re." Re, at the time, was associated with the god Amun as Amun-Re, and was the god of the sun -- a god that was everpresent in Egypt. This name may have been chosen to confirm that it was right and orderly for Hatshepsut to take on the kingship -- that it was central to the rightness and order of the universe.
Heiress Theory
An older theory is skeptical of the idea that Hatshepsut had to justify her right to rule, since, this theory says, the royal line in ancient Egypt, or at least the New Kingdom or the Eighteenth Dynasty, was matriarchal.
- Read more: Heiress Theory
Sources consulted include
- Kara Cooney. Interview, July 3, 2007.
- Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. 2004.
- Zahi Hawass. The Realm of the Pharaoh. 2006.
- John Ray. "Hatshepsut: the Female Pharaoh." History Today. Volume 44 number 5, May 1994.
- Catharine H. Roehrig, editor. Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. 2005. Article contributors include Ann Macy Roth, James P. Allen, Peter F. Dorman, Cathleen A. Keller, Catharine H. Roehrig, Dieter Arnold, Dorothea Arnold.
- Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen. First aired: 7/15/07. Discovery Channel. Brando Quilico, executive producer.
- Joyce Tyldesley. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt. 2006.
- Joyce Tyldesley. Hatchepsut the Female Pharaoh. 1996.
