by Larry Lounsbury

Created on: September 15, 2010

HATSHEPSUT: Usurper or Sovereign Mother?

     Ever since Eve ate from the forbidden fruit men have attempted to win their supposed authority over women kind. Hatshepsut claimed a higher authority and raised two Kings and a New Kingdom.

     In the New Kingdom age Egypt had lost King Thutmose II and was left with a boy king too young to rule. “Tuthmose II might have reigned for only four years, or up to fourteen years; but in any case his death was doubtless unforeseen, leaving as eldest heir a son who might have been no older than a nursling. Tuthmose III was not of "full" royal blood, as his mother was a minor queen by the name of Isis,” (Dorman,2).Young King Tuthmose III was taken under the wings of his stepmother Queen Hatshepsut.  To some her donning the regalia of male pharaoh and stepping into the role of senior coregent while King Tuthmose III himself was too young to protest seemed to be an unprecedented act of apparent usurpation.

     “The cult  of Amun was closely associated with the King himself, and veneration of the god had implications for the status of the king,”  (Brewer, 47). The power of the king was often displayed by his prowess in conquering lands. Due to his early age it is very possible that Queen Hatshepsut had to take power in order to preserve the strengths of Egypt. There is support of this theory through a carving in the Theban tomb of the architect Ineni. It states: “(Tuthmose II) ascended to heaven and united with the gods, while his son stood in his place as king of the two lands, having assumed ruler ship over the throne of the one who begat him, and while his sister, the god's wife Hatshepsut, was conducting the affairs of the country, the two lands being in her care. With Egypt in obeisance she is served, the beneficent divine seed who has come forth before him, the prow rope of Upper Egypt and mooring post of the southerners,”(Dorman,3).

     In Egypt the architect Ineni’s writing carries some weight since in his lifetime he lived through the  reigns of various Tuthmoside kings including Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II and finally Thutmose III. The glaring omission of the new king’s name, plus the mention of Hatshepsut’s primary religious office of “god’s wife” gave her great religious and economic influence.  “The period was a prosperous

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