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Authors: Kara Cooney
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her royal names to point out those deficiencies or to lie about her true nature. Instead, she and her priests focused on how her femininity could coalesce with and complement masculine powers.
An Egyptian king’s masculine sexual abilities likened him to Atum, the god who, through sexual activity with himself, created his own being and the first void in which the civilized universe was placed. Kings were meant to perform the same sexual activity, and although we have no evidence that Egyptian monarchs actually did perform masturbatory rituals in the temples, we know that sexual congress with their many wives took on a similar sacred meaning. A king’s masculinity was also meant to liken him to Osiris, the god who sexually re-created himself after his murder through yet another celebrated act of masturbation. What’s more, the Egyptian king was also believed to be a manifestation of the sun god Re, who was thought to impregnate his own mother with his future selfas he set in the west. It was this power of never-ending renewal that the Egyptian king was meant to embody in his own person, so that when one monarch died, his future self, his son, would take his place in a constant line of rule.
The king’s manly loins allowed him to continue the royal line—the essence of rule for Egypt, with father following son and so on. According to Egyptian belief, a woman was not capable of such regeneration: she could contain and gestate new life, but she could not create it. She could protect her father and brother and son with all the vicious weapons in her arsenal, but, unlike a masculine creator in a harem, she could not engender her future self. Ontologically, Hatshepsut’s feminine kingship was a serious theological obstacle.
From the very beginnings of her reign, Hatshepsut decided that the best defense was a good offense and conveyed to her people what she was able to do in this kingship that a man could not. She could channel the fierce protective powers of the goddesses who spewed fire at the enemies of Re and devoured the rebels, slaking their thirst with the blood of their adversaries, a fact she alluded to by incorporating these goddesses and their destructive-protective powers into her royal names. Ma’at, Wosret, and Wadjyt were all cobra goddesses who could attach to the brow of their master, ready to protect by spitting heat and poison at enemies. Perhaps these names were even meant to calm the fears of some of her priests and officials, because their meaning suggests that Hatshepsut’s most important role was to safeguard her father, the sun god Re, and by extension her nephew, the boy king Thutmose III. Her names clarify that she was not progenitor, in the strict masculine sense of dynastic succession, but guardian of her family’s continuance. Even dissenters could have little argument with that fact.
Why, then, did Hatshepsut take this momentous step, given all its religious impediments, if she never intended to rule on her own but only alongside another king? Why not just continue the informal regency? Thutmose III was probably under ten years of age when Hatshepsut was finally crowned. Perhaps she decided to make her move before it was too late, while her co-king was still too young to understand that her coronation meant an implicit demotion for him, cementing the relationship’s inequality before he gained more maturity. Or, more likely, Hatshepsut required the formality of kingship to keep any hold on her authority.Hatshepsut was not directly related to him. She was just his aunt. Her daughter was still not old enough for sexual congress with the young king, so there could be no marriage between them to cement her regency. Indeed, the young king still needed seven or more years until he finally reached maturity—an eternity in ancient lifetimes.
The
how
of Hatshepsut’s rise to kingship can be reconstructed, at least partially; the
why
is cloaked by her own ideological depiction of it and further
An Egyptian king’s masculine sexual abilities likened him to Atum, the god who, through sexual activity with himself, created his own being and the first void in which the civilized universe was placed. Kings were meant to perform the same sexual activity, and although we have no evidence that Egyptian monarchs actually did perform masturbatory rituals in the temples, we know that sexual congress with their many wives took on a similar sacred meaning. A king’s masculinity was also meant to liken him to Osiris, the god who sexually re-created himself after his murder through yet another celebrated act of masturbation. What’s more, the Egyptian king was also believed to be a manifestation of the sun god Re, who was thought to impregnate his own mother with his future selfas he set in the west. It was this power of never-ending renewal that the Egyptian king was meant to embody in his own person, so that when one monarch died, his future self, his son, would take his place in a constant line of rule.
The king’s manly loins allowed him to continue the royal line—the essence of rule for Egypt, with father following son and so on. According to Egyptian belief, a woman was not capable of such regeneration: she could contain and gestate new life, but she could not create it. She could protect her father and brother and son with all the vicious weapons in her arsenal, but, unlike a masculine creator in a harem, she could not engender her future self. Ontologically, Hatshepsut’s feminine kingship was a serious theological obstacle.
From the very beginnings of her reign, Hatshepsut decided that the best defense was a good offense and conveyed to her people what she was able to do in this kingship that a man could not. She could channel the fierce protective powers of the goddesses who spewed fire at the enemies of Re and devoured the rebels, slaking their thirst with the blood of their adversaries, a fact she alluded to by incorporating these goddesses and their destructive-protective powers into her royal names. Ma’at, Wosret, and Wadjyt were all cobra goddesses who could attach to the brow of their master, ready to protect by spitting heat and poison at enemies. Perhaps these names were even meant to calm the fears of some of her priests and officials, because their meaning suggests that Hatshepsut’s most important role was to safeguard her father, the sun god Re, and by extension her nephew, the boy king Thutmose III. Her names clarify that she was not progenitor, in the strict masculine sense of dynastic succession, but guardian of her family’s continuance. Even dissenters could have little argument with that fact.
Why, then, did Hatshepsut take this momentous step, given all its religious impediments, if she never intended to rule on her own but only alongside another king? Why not just continue the informal regency? Thutmose III was probably under ten years of age when Hatshepsut was finally crowned. Perhaps she decided to make her move before it was too late, while her co-king was still too young to understand that her coronation meant an implicit demotion for him, cementing the relationship’s inequality before he gained more maturity. Or, more likely, Hatshepsut required the formality of kingship to keep any hold on her authority.Hatshepsut was not directly related to him. She was just his aunt. Her daughter was still not old enough for sexual congress with the young king, so there could be no marriage between them to cement her regency. Indeed, the young king still needed seven or more years until he finally reached maturity—an eternity in ancient lifetimes.
The
how
of Hatshepsut’s rise to kingship can be reconstructed, at least partially; the
why
is cloaked by her own ideological depiction of it and further
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