Hatshepsut - 'Fashion for me the body of my daughter and the body of her Ka, a great queen shall I make of her"

Queen Hatshepsut Maatkare ‘Foremost of Noble Ladies, Truth is the Soul of Re'  ruled as the fifth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt, she was the favorite daughter of Tuthmosis 1, and was married to her half brother also known as Tuthmosis. Hatshepsut and Thutmose II had a daughter named Neferure, who grew to become a Gods Wife of Amun. After having their daughter, Hatshepsut could not bear any more children.

When their father died her husband ascended the throne and became Tuthmosis 11 the 4th king of the 18th Dynasty. Tuthmosis married the courageous and energetic Hatshepsut to strengthen his right to the throne. He had a short reign with Hatshepsut when he died,  and so his son who was only two years old by a minor wife, was appointed heir and he became Tuthmosis 111, Hatshepsut became 'Guardian of the Throne' and reigned on behalf of the boy.

Initially Hatshepsut was content  to reign as regent in the early years.  During the reign of her father Tuthmosis 1 Hatshepsut had been allowed to be involved with the dealings of his government, which had obviously inspired her confidence and a strong will to get her own way in life, and so she initially used  the strength of her father's favoritism to her benefit,  she  also held  a very strong position among the Theban priests as the mortal' Gods wife of Amun,'  this position alone offered her  a superior  power,  as to be the living wife of the God Amun Ra is higher than to be the wife of a king.  with this power  and support of the priesthood of Amun, she was able to seize control she cast aside the young Tuthmosis and she sent him  away to train as a priest and scribe and then later as a soldier.

Hatshepsut ruled for 22 years, by the time of Hatshepsut’s death Tuthmosis had risen up the ranks of the army to the Rank of Commander in Chief. 

During the years that Tuthmosis was away from Waset (luxor) Hatshepsut declared herself as Pharaoh and began to dress as a man, the Osiride  statues of her at her Mortuary Temple of Dier El Bahari represent her as a king with a false beard. The relief’s  portray that it was the divine intention of both her  earthly father Tuthmosis 1, and her heavenly father Amun that she would rule Egypt, In the birth Colonnade it declares:


‘Amen –Ra called for the God Khumn the Creator and Fashioner of the Bodies of Men.’ Fashion for me the body of my daughter and the body of her Ka, a great queen shall I make of her, and honor and power shall be worthy of her dignity and glory’  ‘Amun-Ra answered Khumn ‘It shall be done as you have said.  So Khumn fashioned the body of Amen-Ra’s daughter and the body of her Ka, the two forms exactly alike, and more beautiful than the daughters of men. He fashioned them with clay from the air of his potters wheel and Heqet goddess of birth with the frogs head, knelt by his side holding the sign of life towards the clay that the bodies of Hatshepsut and her Ka might be filled with life and breath, and so one of the greatest queens of Egypt was announced to the world. 

When Tuthmosis 111 arrived back in Waset  he had many of Hatshepsuts cartouches and images erased so that her name would be forgotten, and she would be denied an eternal life, he had a wall built around her obelisk in Karnack Temple to bind the energy of the obelisk.

In 1903 Howard Carter found an undecorated tomb in the Valley of the Kings that had been pillaged in antiquity, inside the tomb laid the mummies of two women, this tomb was not of much interest to Howard carter as it did not contain treasure that it was his ambition to find, so he sealed the tomb and wrote a few notes of its condition and whereabouts. Three years later Edward Ayrton entered the tomb that had been registered as KV60 to collect one of the women who was laid in a coffin so that she could be shipped to Cairo; the inscriptions identified her as Sitre, who was the wet nurse of Hatshepsut. The tomb was then sealed again leaving the remaining woman alone to the silence of more years in an empty tomb,  its whereabouts were then lost and the lady forgotten about until another eighty years had passed, and then in June 1989 an archaeologist named Donald P Ryan rediscovered the tomb again, rubble and sand were cleared away until he was able to climb down a staircase leading into the depths of the tomb where fragments of pottery wooden coffin pieces and mummy wrappings littered the floor. Arriving at the burial chamber he found the mummy of the abandoned lady lying in the middle of the room. 
Although no inscriptions were found that could help identify the lady she was obviously of importance and high ranking as she had been buried in the Valley of the Kings, although the tomb she was found in was undecorated I began to wonder could Tuthmosis 111 have wished to deny Hatshepsut the pleasure and magical words with the prayers of a decorated tomb? That would assist her journey to an eternal life.


In a niche Dr.Ryan also discovered a small piece of a face from a coffin, thieves had removed the gold foil covering, but this fragment had a notch at the chin which could have been used to hold a false beard, Hatshepsut wore a false beard to represent herself as a pharaoh. 
The mummy was taken to Cairo and quite a few years later it was scanned and it revealed that it was an obese woman between the ages of 45 and 60 who had bad teeth who had also suffered from cancer, evidence of which can be seen in the pelvic region and the spine.

Embalmers typically eviscerated the dead before embalming them but preserved the organs in jars and boxes.Cairo museum had a small wooden box that they also decided to scan as it bore the cartouche, or royal seal, of Hatshepsut and contained a liver, the scan revealed that also inside this box was a tooth.  An important dentist was asked to study the tooth as the mummy was missing a tooth, and it was found to be an exact match for the mummy.


I have always admired Hatshepsut, and I do believe that you can’t keep a good woman down, she deserves the best, and I wonder if that is also why her Osiris statues smile as they survey the land from the terrace of her mortuary temple, this woman who became a King has risen again and will take her rightful place.