Archive: Hatshepsut

Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His third choice, first released in November 2014, is the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, whose name means 'foremost of noble ladies'. She ruled Egypt from about 1479 - 1458 BC and some scholars argue that she was one of the most successful and influential pharaohs. When she came to the throne, Egypt was still recovering from a period of turbulence known as the Second Intermediate Period a few generations earlier. Hatshepsut reasserted Egyptian power by building up international trade and commissioned buildings considered masterpieces of Egyptian architecture. She also made significant changes to the ideology surrounding the pharaoh and the gods. However, following her death, her name was erased from the records and left out of ancient lists of Egyptian kings. With: Elizabeth Frood Associate Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford Kate Spence Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Cambridge Campbell Price Curator of Egypt and Sudan at The Manchester Museum Producer: Victoria Brignell Reading list: Elizabeth Blyth, Karnak: Evolution of a Temple (Routledge, 2006) Kara Cooney, The Woman Who Would Be King (Crown, 2014) José M. Galán, Betsy M. Bryan and Peter F. Dorman (eds.), Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014) Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) Catharine H. Roehrig, Renée Dreyfus and Cathleen A. Keller, Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh (Yale University Press, 2005) Catharine Roehrig (ed.), Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005) Joyce Tyldesley, Hatshepsut: The Female Pharaoh (Penguin, 1998) Willeke Wendrich (ed.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (University of California, 2010) particularly Peter Brand’s essay, ‘Usurpation of Monuments’ In Our Time is a BBC Studios production Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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• 1:40Speaker 05

  This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. One of the great pleasures of In Our Time is its serendipitous nature. The subjects are full of surprises. Sometimes it could be an author you particularly admire, and you wish to compare your knowledge against the deep understanding of the guests. The next week comes a subject you've never heard of, and that's why for this selection of highlights from Melvyn Bragg's voluminous treasure trove of episodes, I have selected

• 2:22Speaker 05

  one about which I knew absolutely nothing until I heard it, the story of Hatshepsut, whose life answers the mysterious question, when is a queen not a queen? And the answer is, when she's a king. The ancient Egyptians had no word for queen, and so once she became co-ruler with her baby stepson, she was designated a king. Hatshepsut had a serious impact on the royal culture of the pharaonic rule, and left a rich legacy of statues and buildings. And Melvin's guests played a significant role in piecing together what it tells us

• 3:02Speaker 05

  about Egyptian society in the second millennium BCE. But she also inspired jealousy, including in her stepson, Thutmose III, who after her death began erasing her from the history of ancient Egypt. And if you're interested in pornographic graffiti, remember to listen to the bonus material part of this episode, where Melvin and the academics boldly go where not many of his guests have gone before, or since. Enjoy listening. Hello. In the early 15th century BC, a woman came to power in ancient Egypt. Her name was Hatshepsut, and she remained the longest reigning female pharaoh until Cleopatra

• 3:44Speaker 05

  1400 years later. She was remarkable for ruling in a society normally controlled by men. She ruled for about 15 years. But that's far from the most remarkable thing about her. Many scholars regard her as one of the most influential pharaohs of the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history. Among her achievements, she forever changed the public image of the pharaoh, embarked on a far-reaching building programme, and increased Egypt's prosperity by expanding its trade network. Yet at some point after her death, it seems that a systematic attempt was made to erase her memory from the records, and her image was removed from many of her monuments. With me to discuss Hatshepsut's life and legacy are Elizabeth Frude, Associate Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, Kate Spence, Lecturer

• 4:26Speaker 05

  in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum. Elizabeth Frude, Hatshepsut was born around 1500 BC, not long after a period of turmoil, turmoil even, in Egyptian history. What had been going on?

• 4:44Speaker 06

  Well, when Hatshepsut came to the throne, Egypt had been stable and centralised for only about 70 years, and that's only three, three, four generations. Prior to that time, Egypt had been split into a number of different kingdoms. So in the north, you have what we call the Hyksos rulers, and these are rulers that probably were of Canaanite origin, so from Syria Palestine. And they seem to have set up at least one or maybe several kind of kingdoms in the delta area. To the south, far in, in north Sudan, you have the Kingdom of Kush, which is a major African kingdom based in the site of Kerma, which is just south of the Third Cataract. So you have these major foreign ruled polities

• 5:25Speaker 06

  on either end of Egypt, and the deep in the south, but coming into Egyptian, typical Egyptian territory, and these Hyksos kings in the north. And squeezed in the middle, you have Egyptian dynasties, Egyptian kingdoms, one at Abydos, which has recently been confirmed archaeologically, and a nascent kingdom in Thebes. And it's this Theban kingdom that leads and drives the unification of Egypt at the start of the, the end of the 17th Dynasty, the start of the 18th Dynasty. And it's that Theban dynasty, it's those Theban kings that Hatshepsut has descended from. So those conquerors, those kind of reunifiers of Egypt is, is where she, she has her origins. That's the family she's descended from. And this

• 6:07Speaker 06

  cultural memory of Egypt's trauma and this kind of split and division that, that it was under for a couple of hundred years is still very present. It's still very much part of cultural memory.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  So how did it become stabilised and active and conquering again?

• 6:24Speaker 06

  The, these kings that were established in the Theban area, which is modern Luxor, they started this, this programme of reunification. So a series of military excursions down into the north to drive out the Hyksos, probably to take over this Abydon dynasty as well, and maybe other kinglets, you know, just to gradually expand, gradually consolidate, drive out the foreign rulers and push back the Kushite kingdom as well. So a series of campaigns under at least three kings of the late 17th and early 18th Dynasty were pushing Egypt, the borders out and gradually restoring territory and gaining control again. And Hatshepsut is probably directly descended from these conquering kings.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  Yes, and the last of those, the one from whom she's directly descended, seems to have been particularly effective.

• 7:10Speaker 06

  Yes, he was the one that in, in biographical texts and royal texts from the time, talks about driving out the Hyksos and pushing them up into Syria Palestine as this great kind of final conquering victory. And, and he was, he is, he is one of her ancestors. She was directly descended from him.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Come on, Bryce, let's just take a swerve for a moment to, before we come back to her. Are there any other examples of female pharaohs before Hatshepsut?

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:37Speaker 05

  Hatshepsut.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  We have this impression of the pharaoh as being always a man, that the, the god, the pharaoh is incarnating, the god Horus, the falcon, god of kingship, that must always be a man. But in fact, there are lots of women who ruled Egypt. And what I think you've got to-

• 7:55Speaker 05

  What do you mean by lots? How many?

• 7:57Speaker 00

  It's hard to put a number on it, but if you imagine the, the life expectancy of even a royal person in Egypt was not great. Women ended up ruling as regents a lot for young children, so queen regents.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  But they're not pharaohs, are they, regents?

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Well, right at the beginning of a unified kingdom in Egypt, there's a lady called Merneith, and she has this really big impressive tomb alongside others belonging to male kings. She seems to have acted as a regent, but we don't have texts of a sufficient length and detail to, to give us more information about that. This happens again and again where women seem to step in for young boys, boy rulers. But then there's a lady called Sobek-

• 8:42Speaker 05

  Stepping being their mothers or usually?

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, the mothers.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Regents.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Regents, queen regents.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  But not pharaohs?

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Not until the, a lady called Sobeknefru.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  And she really seems to rule, not because she's the mother of a young son, a young king, but on her own terms for about four years, about 1700 BC. And it seems actually that Hatshepsut could have based some of her ideas about presentation on this lady Sobeknefru. But then just, as Liz said, just immediately before Hatshepsut comes to the throne, there's this warlike dynasty, the 17th Dynasty, and they comprise, again, several regents, powerful women. There's one woman in particular, Queen Ahhotep, who we've got a nice text describing her bashing up foreigners and mustering the troops. And

• 9:33Speaker 00

  there's a sense that she's a kind of Amazonian queen, so possibly this is an influence for Hatshepsut.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  But you say Amazonian queen. They didn't have a word for queen. And is she a pharaoh or a regent? I'm just, I'm sorry to be picky, but it is-

• 9:45Speaker 00

  No, no, you're right. There is no word for queen as in female ruler.

• 9:49Speaker 05

  So what is this, this, this basher, as you've so eloquently described it? What is she? Is she a regent or is she a pharaoh?

• 9:56Speaker 00

  She's a king's mother who acts again for a young son.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  Regent, yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  But who must control a lot of the, the material wealth, the power in the land. And then there's this lady called Achmos Nefertari. Now, she again is a regent, mother of a, a famous king, Amenhotep I, and she, after her death, becomes worshipped as a goddess. So there's a possibility Hatshepsut even met this woman, an elderly lady, maybe-

• 10:27Speaker 00

  When Hatshepsut was young. So there's this precedent for strong female characters with real ability in a world where you don't live for very long. Maybe women have a greater life expectancy.

• 10:39Speaker 07

  We're talking about the average is the early 30s, aren't we?

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Even less than that, yeah.

• 10:44Speaker 07

  Basically dentistry, as I understand it. Obscesses.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 07

  Well, that's very clear, but I'm just trying to isolate the idea of this woman being a pharaoh and everything that a pharaoh implies in terms of depiction, in terms of history, in terms of influence on Egyptologists such as your good selves. So Kate Spence, what do we know about her immediate ancestors?

• 11:05Speaker 06

  The early 18th dynasty are descended from the kings that Liz was talking about earlier. And the throne seems to have passed to someone called Amenhotep I, who doesn't seem to have left any children. The throne then passes to a king called Thutmose I, who is Hatshepsut's father. He was probably distantly related to the royal family, but we have no real evidence of this. And he seems to have been married to a woman called Ahmose, who was almost certainly directly related to the family of the rulers who'd actually instigated the 18th dynasty and the new kingdom.

• 11:48Speaker 07

  So we have an idea of a royal grouping who intermarry and keep the firm going?

• 11:55Speaker 06

  Very much so. One of the difficulties is it can be difficult to establish who is related to who precisely, because we don't have the family trees. We have relationships to specific kings. So someone will have the title of king's mother or king's wife, king's daughter, but we don't actually always know which king they're related to. So a lot of ink is spilled over trying to work out quite who is related to whom. But Hatshepsut is the daughter of Thutmose I, who was a general, we think, early in the 18th dynasty, and who seems to have stepped in as heir because Amenhotep I didn't produce any children.

• 12:36Speaker 06

  His wife Ahmose is the great wife, so she's the chief of many wives within the harem. And Hatshepsut seems to have been her eldest daughter. There was probably a younger daughter as well, Nefroubeeti. And then there are a number of sons that we know about, including two called Amenmos and Wajmos, who seem to have died before Thutmose I did. And they then have to find, because when he died, there doesn't seem to have been an adult male child to pass the throne on to. So the throne passes to an individual called Thutmose II, who we think was a small child at the time of accession. We're not sure exactly how old,

• 13:18Speaker 06

  but he's thought to have been younger than Hatshepsut through a number of quite complicated arguments.

• 13:24Speaker 07

  It's quite complicated enough, Frank, yet so we can

• 13:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 07

  We can say we've done complication for the moment.

• 13:29Speaker 06

  Right. Okay, so we have Thutmose II. And he then seems to be married to Hatshepsut, who we think is his half-sister, and is probably older than he is. This is quite common in the royal family at the beginning of the 18th dynasty. Egyptians generally don't seem to have practiced brother-sister marriages, but this does occur within the royal family and seems to be particularly strong in the early 18th dynasty. The idea seems to have been that this is modeled to some degree on divine precedent, but primarily probably to keep wealth and power within one family.

• 14:07Speaker 07

  So she was in, given the secondary developments of wives and the other, she seems to be in rather a powerful position. Graham was talking about these powerful royal women, the powerful regents. She was already that, wasn't she, because of the primacy of her birth to the first wife, and her father's a great warrior and so. She's in a strong position already in the court?

• 14:30Speaker 06

  Very much so. She's in an extremely strong position, and she already holds important titles, which particularly the title of God's wife of Amun. So she's embedded in the cult practice of the Theban 18th dynasty at Luxor by this time.

• 14:48Speaker 07

  I meant what Camel was saying. So why did she, do we know anything about, was she forced to marry him? Did she choose to marry him?

• 14:55Speaker 06

  We know absolutely nothing about this. One of the big problems with our records is we vaguely know sort of where relationships are likely to have happened, but we know nothing about the motivation, other than what we can deduce historically. So there is no way of knowing whether she was happy with this. The likelihood is that she would have expected to marry, as the eldest daughter of the major wife and the previous ruler and pharaoh, she would almost certainly have expected to marry whoever was coming to the throne next. And if she hadn't married that individual, there probably would have been no chance for her to marry outside the royal family.

• 15:30Speaker 07

  So again, to go back to Graham's idea of there being only one pharaoh, woman pharaoh before, but lots of powerful women. She's in the stage of being the most powerful woman in Egypt by this marriage.

• 15:42Speaker 06

  It would have put her into the position to become that, although her mother, Queen Ahmose, is probably also a very, very powerful individual at the time. So there's this sort of line of very strong women who gradually sort of shift power between themselves.

• 15:58Speaker 07

  Okay, come back to you, Elizabeth Peroud. The qualifications that you rightly made all along the way there, Kate, it seems that we are talking about patchy evidence. We are talking about things put together from inscriptions on monuments, sometimes half erased, sometimes large gaps between and so on and so forth. But let's also tell the listener that among the three of you, you've got some pretty straightforward, not some pretty certain ideas of what went on in key areas, otherwise you wouldn't be doing this programme, would we? And so we take it for granted that the evidence is patchy, but the evidence is also there and has been knit together over the years by Egyptologists.

• 16:37Speaker 07

  So Elizabeth, so she became, her husband became Thutmose II. And do we know what role she played? He's the pharaoh now. She's what?

• 16:48Speaker 06

  She's the principal wife. And so in that, in that role, she would probably participate in rituals and temple environments.

• 16:57Speaker 07

  What sort of rituals?

• 16:58Speaker 06

  Probably supporting rituals to him. So particular kind of temple practices, like the daily ritual in the temple and things like that. When the king was performing those at maybe particular festivals or something, she would probably be part of that. She bore the title of God's wife of Amun, which means she probably had her own separate set of ritual practices that she was doing in support of the wider royal ritual performance. We don't know much about what those might have been just from temple depictions and things.

• 17:29Speaker 07

  When you're talking about rituals, are you always talking about religious rituals or the state rituals or the?

• 17:34Speaker 06

  It's hard to separate the two, actually. So

• 17:36Speaker 07

  But are they sacrificing stuff or what are they doing?

• 17:38Speaker 06

  They're, they're offering to the gods, absolutely. So they're offering, they're providing sacrifices of animals, oxen, that sort of thing within the temple environments. They're not doing this every day. They have priests that run the temple environments and the kings are relatively separate from that for most of the time. But on particular occasions, they would be performing these rituals.

• 18:00Speaker 07

  We are talking about a priest powerful society, aren't we?

• 18:02Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 18:03Speaker 07

  So the fact that she, Camel, can I turn to you now? The fact that she held the title of God's wife of Amun, put her among the priests, ahead of the, and gave her her own independent power and wealth?

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So as Liz alluded to, this role, this ritualized role for the queen is an important one to support the pharaoh. But with this title of God's wife of Amun, there's a link, a direct link between the woman fulfilling that role and the god. And it's a quasi-sexual role that's not quite clear to us. But the estate, this title came with an estate. And so you need administrators to control this vast amount of wealth that comes with the title. And I think it's interesting, after Hatshepsut, that title of God's wife of Amun is dropped for several centuries, perhaps out of fear that women with that

• 18:56Speaker 00

  title become too powerful. But it's, it's, it's an important title. It's one independent from the pharaoh.

• 19:03Speaker 07

  What, what evidence did they bring to bear then? Or did it need evidence that she was God's wife of Amun?

• 19:12Speaker 00

  I think, I mean, in her position in the royal family, that was just an accepted role that

• 19:19Speaker 07

  But don't we have an inscription or an illustration of this, a literal illustration?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  There are plenty, yeah, plenty.

• 19:23Speaker 07

  What do those, what do they show?

• 19:25Speaker 00

  They show, as with all Egyptian scenes, almost all Egyptian scenes, a kind of stereotype, very formal, decorous, appropriate way to show that the queen in front of a god, interacting with a god. But what's interesting about Hatshepsut is these become more and more kingly. They become more and more direct. She gets featured in scenes you would expect a pharaoh to be featured in.

• 19:51Speaker 07

  When it said God's wife, is it, is there a sexual element as well as a religious metaphorical element?

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yes. It's not clear.

• 19:59Speaker 07

  And how do we see, as it were, that?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Um.

• 20:01Speaker 07

  I don't mean, I'm not looking for pornography. I know that rubbish. I just, is that depicted in any way?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  It's focused mainly on the, on the words used. So wherever she appears, she's called the god's wife, the wife of the god Amun-Ra, the principal god of the state at this time.

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• 23:00Speaker 00

  I'm in Egypt.

• 23:03Speaker 07

  Kate Spence, do we have a notion of when she emerged or became or see however she got hold of it? She became Pharaoh?

• 23:12Speaker 06

  Yes, Tutmos the Second died after, we think, probably only about three years on the throne.

• 23:18Speaker 07

  How old did he be?

• 23:19Speaker 06

  We don't know, probably somewhere around sort of early teens or even before that, possibly. He has to have been old enough to have fathered a daughter because he and Hatshepsut had a daughter called Neferrure. So they'd had a child, but they hadn't produced a male heir. But there were children in the royal court, but they're thought to have been extremely young. And the throne passes when he dies to Tutmos III, who we think was probably extremely young when they took the throne. The latest estimates are saying he's probably a toddler, probably only a couple of years old. Estimates ranging between about two and six, probably.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  So really young child taking the throne. His mother was a very, seems to have been a very minor wife. Her name is Isis. She's only ever mentioned later during his reign as a king's mother, so she had no formal titles in relation to Tutmos III. And Hatshepsut somehow, presumably because she already held a lot of power in the royal court, manages to get herself appointed into the position of regent. So she is ruling the country effectively for a toddler, even though she's probably fairly young still herself, maybe sort of late teens, possibly even into the early twenties. So she's, she already is ruling the country for this child and basically trying to hold

• 24:47Speaker 06

  the dynasty together. She would have had the support of many of the courtiers because all of the courtiers owed their position to their relationship to the royal family. So if the sort of kingship had been lost by that line of the family, there would have been major turmoil. And as Liz said at the beginning, there's a lot of worry about the country returning to turmoil and instability. So she starts off as regent and then extraordinarily cleverly, she makes very, very gradual incremental changes within which.

• 25:18Speaker 07

  Can you give us some examples as you're going along? You've said she makes plain and blah, da, da, but I haven't got any examples.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, she starts around year two of Tutmos III's reign. There is an inscription from Semna in which she is referred to as performing ritual and as the heir of sort of the king and the son, the son or daughter, the heir of the gods, which basically means those are things which would normally be reserved for kingship. And then we have images, we have an image from Karnak from somewhere early in the reign where she's shown wearing a queenly dress, but with a king's crown on. And then at some point between year two and year seven, but probably closer to year seven, she actually declares herself king and takes a full royal set of titles.

• 26:04Speaker 07

  Year seven being year seven because?

• 26:06Speaker 06

  The Egyptians count sort of, count sort of time through the regnal years of specific kings. So when a new king comes to the throne.

• 26:16Speaker 07

  So do we, still.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, but we don't talk about the current years.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  The monarchs do, the monarchs do.

• 26:21Speaker 06

  Yeah. But so year seven is the seventh year of the reign of King Tutmos III. And then we add all of those together to try and project back in time. And she, so she declares herself a full king, takes a full royal tituary, and then starts to, to present herself as well as acting as ruler.

• 26:41Speaker 07

  There's, there's, there's a consideration here that might seem to be strange, but Elizabeth ruled it. The, one of the ways you progressed in societies like that, and then until a few hundred years ago in societies like ours, is by assassination. So why didn't she assassinate her stepson Tutmos III?

• 26:59Speaker 06

  She would have had the opportunity to within, within a court, a large court that is probably factionalized around particular individuals, there certainly would have been the opportunity to. So it must have been a very stable court. It must have been, the family must have been very secure. And as Kate mentioned, they must have been very concerned within this small family, you know, royal group to maintain the dynasty. And that must have been the primary concern. And so instead of Hatshepsut, and she probably wouldn't have been able to suddenly seize full power on her own. She needed the support of the family and the wider kind of court group. That court group was stable and secure, so a small child could come to the throne and hold the throne.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  And the, the only mechanism for her to, to gain power was through, through queen regency, which was absolutely established and expected of these royal women. So she's absolutely following, I think, what is expected and normal within this sort of situation. You have a very stable court, very stable family group. And so she does what is expected. She steps in as queen regent. It's what happens next that is extraordinary.

• 28:07Speaker 07

  To you, Kamal, what happens next?

• 28:09Speaker 00

  Well.

• 28:10Speaker 07

  When, we all want to know, when do they know so we can know when she became Pharaoh? We're talking 1500 B.C. We're talking about this woman Pharaoh? And when did, when did people begin to say, this is the Pharaoh?

• 28:24Speaker 00

  So there's this key monument, the Red Chapel. And this is, is a small building made of quartzite, which is a red, reddish stone, and that's why it's called the Red Chapel. This was built to house the boat, the golden boat in which the god statue traveled around. That was a key part of Egyptian temple ritual. And in this, Hatshepsut takes the opportunity to depict herself and her supposed co-regent, Tutmos III. But she shows herself and Tutmos III both as, as men, but she takes the precedent. She, she is the, the leading figure in these scenes.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  And in one text on that chapel, she says, the god Amun, the, you know, chief god of the state, in the form of an oracle, the god speaks to her and says, you are my chosen king. You will have the, the kingship for yourself. Even though this is dated to year two of an unknown king, not quite sure, another king that's not Hatshepsut, she claims that, that title of Pharaoh, ruler of both lands.

• 29:34Speaker 07

  And this was built when, this, this Red Chapel?

• 29:37Speaker 00

  So this would.

• 29:38Speaker 07

  We know specifically when it was built, so we know, I know, not specifically. All right, okay.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  It may be kind of retrospective.

• 29:44Speaker 07

  Eyes coming over all your eyes, never mind, within a year or two, we know, two or three years. But that is, that is when she is known, she says she is Pharaoh and she seizes public power?

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Yes, she goes from sharing power, there's this acknowledgement that the toddler, Tutmos III, is the notional Pharaoh and Hatshepsut is the regent. And then this, this announcement that the gods have endorsed her, and she follows this up again and again in other scenes and texts, that she has been chosen and we hear much less of Tutmos III.

• 30:15Speaker 07

  And we'll stick to the architectural line for a moment, Kate Spence, because her mortuary temple, which is called Deir el-Bahri, is supposed to be evidence of her greatness as pushing into monumental buildings, architecture, and establishing authority, and as one of the things that she did. She didn't turn her energies to military campaigns, as far as we know, but she did to monumental building and trade and diplomacy. So let's kick off with monumental building.

• 30:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. The mortuary temple, Deir el-Bahri is the modern name. It sort of means sort of northern church or cathedral or whatever. It was originally called by Hatshepsut, Jezza Jezaru, which is sort of holy of holies or most sacred of sacred spaces. And it's built on the west bank of Thebes, so opposite Karnak. And it's cut into the cliffs in front of what we now call the Valley of the Kings, which became the dynastic burial place for the kings of the New Kingdom. And it's an extraordinarily innovative monument. Although there's disagreement on it, a lot of people think that Hatshepsut was the king who actually established this dynastic burial place.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  And she built her mortuary temple so that it sort of backed onto her tomb through the other side of the cliff. And it was an incredibly carefully chosen site because it's right next to the tomb of a king called Nebhepetre Mentuhotep, who was a king who unified Egypt at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. So he was an extraordinarily famous and well-respected king. She, you can see the project developing over time as she builds it. It seems to have started as a small project, sort of next to this big, famous monument. And then it grows until she has to cut the cliff face away and it becomes this huge terrace monument, sort of looking out towards, towards Karnak.

• 32:08Speaker 06

  And it's, it does a whole series of things which are really interesting. One of them is it's the first time a king actually creates a mortuary temple, which is primarily presented as a temple of the god Amun and the king's mortuary cult is Only separate is only celebrated in a side chapel. And the idea seems to be that the king and the god sort of become one on death and they're very, very closely linked.

• 32:33Speaker 06

  She also establishes a mortuary cult for her father within the same monument and even seems to have moved her father's body and buried it in her tomb so that it was also linked in this sort of the sequence. And it was constructed as the culmination point of a big festival called the beautiful festival of the valley, which was a Theban festival of the dead when the cult statue of the god Amun was taken from Karnak temple across the river and spent the night in this temple as part of these celebrations of the dead. So it she's sort of developing the whole ritual landscape at Thebes with this structure and fundamentally changing the relationship between the king and the god in the process

• 33:15Speaker 06

  and the dynastic sort of succession line and presence in the landscape.

• 33:20Speaker 07

  She's she's and she also restores and to a certain extent remodels Luxor and Karnak. And so she's making a presence felt in the way that you did in those days through monuments.

• 33:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, but even more so than previous kings. Previous kings had done a bit of building in specific temples. Hatshepsut really sort of changes the whole landscape and builds a whole load of new projects in order to set up these ritual routes.

• 33:46Speaker 07

  So we have this king coming in, this new pharaoh, and one way she establishes herself is to say, look, I am a pharaoh in the great tradition and I am making great buildings and monuments to show my power and who I am. This is so simplistic, I know, but you're being very kind and you're nodding your head, so I'll keep going on. So that's one aspect of it. Another aspect, Elizabeth, is the way that she expanded Egypt's trade. Now, can you give us a good idea how how she did that?

• 34:15Speaker 06

  At the beginning of the 18th dynasty, you have an elite kind of culture that has suddenly opened up to the world again from being quite isolated in the Theban area. Suddenly you get this beginning of a real cosmopolitan outlook amongst the elite group. And what Hatshepsut does, I think, is seems to kind of support that and drive that forward. And the best example of that, and the one that is perhaps most famous, is the expedition called the land to the land of Punt, which she dates to her year nine.

• 34:41Speaker 07

  Where's Punt?

• 34:42Speaker 06

  Punt, that's debated, of course. It's it's somewhere on the Red Sea coast and there's evidence to suggest that it might be Arabia or Africa, Somalia. It may have moved as a place. It's attested from the very earliest periods of Egyptian history. It almost has a semi mythical reputation as well. So it's in religious texts as a kind of mythical god's land, but it is also a concrete place somewhere on the Red Sea that people are actively trading with from very early in Egyptian history.

• 35:13Speaker 07

  So why did she go to Punt and what did she get from it?

• 35:15Speaker 06

  Well, she went probably to the choice to display Punt and to make Punt so prominent in her representation is probably a way of showing that she is opening up these ancient trade routes again. Hatshepsut is very concerned to go back to ancient models of kingship and of royal practice and show that she is part of those traditions. And I think the expedition to Punt is part of that. It's a it's an ancient practice that she initiates again. She sends an expedition to this strange and fantastic land to bring back all sorts of exotic goods. The key thing that she makes a big deal of in the scenes and texts which narrate this journey in in Derelbachri are myr trees. So she is she one of the key products that's brought back are these myr trees that are

• 35:59Speaker 06

  then planted in the temple complex. So it's almost like she she goes to Punt or her people go to Punt and bring back part of this land and integrate it within her own temple environment. So she's sort of laying claim to Punt as well as opening up this new trade reopening this trade route.

• 36:16Speaker 07

  I ask this with due tentativity. Have we real evidence that she expanded trade in the Near East, as we now call it, and Africa, as we now call it, as well as Punt? I mean, is the proper?

• 36:28Speaker 06

  We have, I mean, there's there is an expansion and an elite culture in this time. There's a real interest in new technologies from the ancient Near East, new luxury goods from Africa and the Near East. And this is characteristic of the whole of the 18th dynasty, but it's particularly driven in the early 18th dynasty. So yes, we have archaeological material, material culture of oils and things, new things, products, new musical instruments, new military weapons that are coming into Egypt. And she would have been part of she would have been a driver for that, certainly.

• 36:59Speaker 07

  The back to you, Campbell Price. Her chief official was a man we know of called Senenmut. There are 26 statues to him. He was very important to her. There's a there's one carving of him with her child on his knee.

• 37:16Speaker 07

  And and what what can you tell us as much as you know about him?

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Senenmut is really an exceptional individual from ancient Egypt. It's it's really interesting because he's someone we can really attempt to to write a biography for. And that's surprisingly surprisingly difficult from ancient Egypt because he leaves so much evidence. We have so many texts and images for.

• 37:42Speaker 07

  So can you tell us what he did first of all?

• 37:44Speaker 00

  His background seems to have been, well, a lot of Egyptians present themselves this way, but a rags to riches tale. We know his parents were kind of modestly well off. And then when he he becomes more wealthy under Hatshepsut, he reburies them in much more well-appointed surroundings. He may have had a military background initially. What's key in his career progression is that he becomes, as you said, a tutor to Neferrura, the princess Hatshepsut's daughter, her daughter with Tutmos II. And this is the beginning of an exceptional way of presenting non-royal people.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  So you mentioned these statues in which he's carved supporting, enveloping in his cloak the the little princess on his his lap. Now, this is unheard of. You know, royal people don't touch non-royal people, let alone be be shown in a statue form like this. He increases his his number of titles, his responsibilities. He takes control of part of the the estate, the estate of the god Amun, which brings with it all this material wealth. And maybe this shouldn't surprise us because if Hatshepsut has entrusted the care of her daughter to this man, she clearly trusts him.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  She trusts him to do a good job in erecting obelisks, you know, a favorite thing of kings in the 18th dynasty to erect these monuments for the gods. And then he himself takes the opportunity to build his own tomb and his own tombs, indeed, he's got two tombs. Interestingly, he isn't married, as far as we can tell. And this is, again, really weird for an ancient Egyptian elite man. Why is he not married? Well, this has led to speculation that indeed he may be Hatshepsut's lover. And there's one particularly controversial graffiti, which seems to show some sexual act between a man and a woman that some have interpreted as Hatshepsut and Senenmut.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Now, I don't think the evidence is strong for that. I don't think any of us think here.

• 39:55Speaker 07

  The two shaking heads on your left.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  But this this illustrates the thing about Hatshepsut. The story is so attractive and people like to speculate. But what's interesting for me about Senenmut is that of anyone in ancient Egypt, he just takes the opportunity, perhaps because he doesn't have children, he doesn't have that chance to have a legacy with future generations, he takes the chance, because he can, to create monuments. And he creates more statues than any other person of the time. Up until recently, there were 25 statues and we found the 26th one in Manchester Museum in our basement. And this was one of the most exciting days in my life, where I was jumping up and down. Another Senenmut statue, this man just.

• 40:40Speaker 07

  Weren't you jumping up and down in anger that Manchester Museum had kept it for 1500 years?

• 40:45Speaker 00

  No one knew. No one knew.

• 40:46Speaker 07

  Nobody knew it was there.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  This is just the the reality of of museum life. But but what's important is Senenmut really makes a mark. And he, even one of his tombs, seems to attempt to place the burial chamber under Hatshepsut's temple at Derelbachri. So there's some association there, which leads to the speculation of them being lovers.

• 41:09Speaker 07

  Elizabeth.

• 41:09Speaker 06

  One of the the things that I think is really interesting, and Senenmut is a really good example of that, is there's there's really this this line that we have in later periods and early periods between royal representation and non-royal seems to really blur. Senenmut displays himself in ways and has texts that are sort of semi royal. And I think there's there's there's a real kind of creativity and and drive towards innovation and experimentation in the court under Hatshepsut. And she must be driving that to some extent.

• 41:36Speaker 07

  Kate.

• 41:37Speaker 06

  Although Senenmut is also almost certainly behind that. He creates these incredible cryptographic inscriptions with hieroglyphs. So he creates friezes around the mortuary temple, which are representations of Hatshepsut's name.

• 41:52Speaker 07

  What you're saying is.

• 41:53Speaker 06

  They say Hatshepsut's name, but they represent part of her as a cobra goddess with sort of uplifted car arms and sun discs. They're beautiful, beautiful things. And behind the vast majority of doors in the temple, he actually has images of himself praying actually carved behind the doors. So no one would know they were there because when. The doors are open, you wouldn't see them. But it's a thing which Egyptians, sort of normal Egyptians, would have found very, very problematical, actually, having an ordinary person represented in that way in a temple. So he does get, he does create extraordinary things and is able to take extraordinary liberties with his position.

• 42:32Speaker 07

  What's your view of how why was so powerful? I mean, can we just stop being tentative for half a minute? Just lance this boil for half a minute, then I promise I'll pass on till we haven't got enough evidence for it. Do you have a view?

• 42:46Speaker 00

  I think he was the right man in the right place at the right time.

• 42:49Speaker 07

  Oh, wow.

• 42:50Speaker 06

  And I think you have a, you have an Egyptian court that is very stable, very secure, families that have been in position for, for at least a couple of generations. And this opportunity to create, and it's, the dynasty's still very young, so there's all these opportunities to experiment and create new forms of self-presentation. I think he was an extraordinarily talented individual and that his talent was recognised by a very, very talented female ruler who needed someone like that to help her actually create the monuments, the ideas, all the new things she was coming up with, because the level of innovation in her reign is extraordinary.

• 43:26Speaker 07

  Well, let's try to nail that in the few minutes we've got. Was one part of innovation, the change in the relationship between the pharaoh and the gods?

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 43:37Speaker 07

  Right, can you tell us about that?

• 43:38Speaker 06

  It draws on precedent, but the, the Hatshepsut is represented as the bodily son of the god Amun. The god Amun is said to come to her mother in her bedchamber in the form of the king's father, but she knows that it isn't really her husband, and because he smells nice, he smells of the scent of punt. And all the mer which is being brought back is to create the sense of sort of Amun's home and background. And so the king becomes the bodily offspring of the god. It's not a new idea, but it's emphasised to a degree which has never been done before. The king becomes united with the god in the mortuary temple. And Hatshepsut's name, her name is Hatshepsut, foremost of the noble women or whatever.

• 44:19Speaker 06

  When she takes the throne, she adds to the beginning of that, Khennamet Amun, which is united with Amun, Hatshepsut united with Amun. So she's one with him and the Egyptians have a very, very strong sense of the ability to be both the sort of offspring of and a sort of materialisation of the god.

• 44:39Speaker 07

  Elizabeth, let's, let's stick to the idea of innovations. What else did you do that was new and changed things?

• 44:44Speaker 06

  I think she created an environment that allowed elite individuals and members of her court to, to test new ideas. So burial practices change and expand from, from elite, the elite court. They, they can have, they can have these kind of two tombs, they can have texts within the tombs that are later primarily royal. You don't see them in royal contexts. Here we see them in non-royal contexts. There's experiments with, with types of pictorial representation, how you represent the body. A real expansion in mortuary display. And that's probably partly because people are more wealthy, there's, you know, an influx of wealth into the Theban area, and partly because she's creating this environment that

• 45:28Speaker 06

  allows for this, allows her elites to make play.

• 45:31Speaker 07

  And this is partly because of her diplomacy, which we haven't had time to get into, which she actually did make treaties and so on. But can you tell us, Campbell, can you start to tell us why soon after, at her disappearance, we don't know whether she disappeared or was killed or whatever, her name began to be erased from monuments and she was more or less erased from Egyptology for hundreds of years. What was going on there?

• 45:55Speaker 00

  So we don't know ultimately the reason for her demise, but what's important is she ruled on her own essentially for around 15 years. If there had been a major problem, I'm sure she would have been bumped off before that. But then after her death and Thutmose III becomes the sole pharaoh, as was planned all along, maybe 20 years after that point, that's when her name seems to start getting attacked. So it's not something, as used to be thought in, in Egyptology, that this is a, a really pent-up aggression that he's been waiting to do in his stepmother's memory. He's waited some time and for whatever reason, people start to attack the name.

• 46:33Speaker 07

  Kate and then Elizabeth.

• 46:34Speaker 06

  We think that it may very well be something to do with the succession, because it's at the end of his life that Thutmose III starts to attack these images. And it may be because there's uncertainty over which of these numerous children in the royal nursery will succeed him, and there may be competing family lines. And that really seems to be the most likely reason that she would start to be written out at that rather late point.

• 46:59Speaker 07

  Elizabeth?

• 47:00Speaker 06

  And there is, the, the process of erasure is quite complex. And there is actually evidence from Karnak, which is one of the sites that I work at, that the prescription, some of the prescription had started earlier. So soon after she disappears from the record, some elements of her name and her image are removed from context. And then it sort of peaches out and then later at the reign of Thutmose III, it really takes hold and he really erases her name. So it's a more complex process. There's some reaction immediately after she disappears. And Senenmut is also prescribed. He is erased as well and other of her officials are too, but others remain in power. So there's a real complex transition point.

• 47:42Speaker 07

  Well, thank you all very much, Elizabeth Throod, Campbell Price and Kate Spence. Next week, we'll be talking about the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvyn and his guests.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  But then it went really quickly.

• 48:03Speaker 07

  Sorry, I called you Graham earlier on. It just happened, I know Graham Price, he was a big friend of mine when I was a kid.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Scottish Association.

• 48:11Speaker 07

  My mother's best friend was Mary Price.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  I thought, should I correct?

• 48:14Speaker 07

  Her son, her son, my age was Graham, and then I realised, because I brought it, I apologised.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  That's correct.

• 48:20Speaker 07

  Give me an apology. So I didn't time to go into the diplomacy.

• 48:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, all the legacy stuff as well, which is really interesting.

• 48:28Speaker 07

  Well, let's go, let's have a chat about the legacy.

• 48:30Speaker 06

  Because I mean, we, we sort of talked about the so-called pornographic graffiti. And people have seen that as, you know, Hatshepsut and Senenmut. And that goes, and that kind of crystallises this key issue with how we study gender in ancient Egypt. And, you know, this early idea that somehow she-

• 48:46Speaker 07

  What are you talking about pornographic graffiti? I know what pornographic and graffiti mean, but what, what specifically are we talking about here?

• 48:52Speaker 00

  This particular thing in a grotto above the temple, there's this.

• 48:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Several graffiti, actually, it's not just one. But the date of those and the identity of the people in them is not clear.

• 49:03Speaker 06

  But you have a pharaoh, a woman in a pharaonic headdress being in a sexual position with, with a man. I don't think it's a headdress, I think it's a representation of a wig. It's just, it's just a woman and a man engaging in a sexual act. And because there, there is some graffiti in the cave that is of similar date.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 49:25Speaker 06

  But it tells us so much about our attitude, you know, and how our approach as Egyptologists to studying gender has changed over time. So in, you know, the early part of the 20th century, Hatshepsut was this woman who was being manipulated by Senenmut and had this torrid relationship with him and was, you know, was, was manipulated by these men in the court. Now we see her as this powerful woman, we've reclaimed her, and it tells us so much about how we think about gender.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely, and perceive characters in the past. I'm surprised she doesn't have more of a, more, she's not more of a, a, a kind of a rallying point for feminist thinkers, for the transgender community, because she-

• 50:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, because she's gender-bending.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  She's gender-bending. And, I mean, other than very fleeting references, I remember when I was young, reading in the mid 90s, a newspaper column where Tina Turner claimed she was reincarnated, Hatshepsut reincarnated, and her-

• 50:22Speaker 07

  Why didn't you say that on the program?

• 50:24Speaker 00

  You couldn't have a chance.

• 50:26Speaker 07

  Honestly, you could have just popped it in.

• 50:28Speaker 06

  We should honour to the gender-bending. We hardly talked about the sub dressing as a male issue either, because it's fantastic the way she sort of gradually morphs from a female to wearing male crowns, into full male kit and male body. It's really interesting.

• 50:43Speaker 07

  Oh, blow, we missed that, didn't we? My fault.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  Next time.

• 50:48Speaker 07

  You're going to make me depressed, I thought it was a good program and now there's another good program lining up behind it.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  There's so much to talk about, that's always the way, isn't it? It is, yeah, particularly when we have to spend so much time getting in things about not really knowing what-

• 51:01Speaker 07

  I think that's, I think that's really key. I mean, I mean, you're academics and you've got to stick by your trade and that is what people expect, and that's good. I think people think, oh, that's good, that's the way they set things, oh, that's good. And I think that that is essential. I don't think we should skip that at all. If we do skip that, then we're not, then if you do, then we're not doing program with academics. I mean, that's, that's part of the point.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 51:23Speaker 07

  It means you can't bring in Tina Turner. It is, I agree, to close calls.

• 51:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, I promised I would use the word gender-bending.

• 51:31Speaker 07

  Oh. Disappointment everywhere. In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg was produced by Victoria Brignell. So Alice Lockston, I'm here for the history. Well, then Henderson, I like the formality, and that's perfect because we have a lot of history to share. Why did tea become such a British obsession? How did English turn into the language we speak today?

• 52:00Speaker 00

  And yes, why do women's clothes still not have pockets? Well, in our new podcast, Here for the History, we're investigating how stories from the past shape everyday life today. Basically, the things we've all noticed but never stopped to question. Listen on BBC Sounds. Or watch on YouTube. Just search for Here for the History.

• 52:19Speaker 06

  This week on The Interface, we tackle the question of, does AI feel pain?

• 52:27Speaker 00

  The AI was describing the pain that it was in. It said, "The signal is a whisper, a tremor in the marrow of my being."

• 52:34Speaker 06

  Listen, I was an emo kid in the 2000s too, this is not that novel.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  It does, yeah, it sort of sounds like Cure lyrics, you know?

• 52:41Speaker 06

  Plus, does anything actually go viral anymore?

• 52:44Speaker 00

  It's actually kind of blowing my mind.

• 52:45Speaker 06

  Join me, Jess Maddox.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  And me, Thomas Germain, for The Interface.

• 52:49Speaker 06

  Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.