Hatshepsutحتشبسوت

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I. She married her half-brother Thutmose II and, even before becoming ruler, held the powerful religious title of God's Wife of Amun. When Thutmose II died, the heir — her young stepson Thutmose III — was only a small child, so Hatshepsut stepped in as regent. Within a few years she took the remarkable step of having herself crowned full pharaoh, ruling alongside Thutmose III as senior king. Breaking with centuries of male-only tradition, she adopted the complete titulary and imagery of a king, and in art was shown in the kilt, crown, and ceremonial beard of a male pharaoh — a deliberate statement that she ruled with the same divine authority as any king before her.

Unlike many pharaohs who built their fame on war, Hatshepsut made her name through trade and prosperity. The most celebrated event of her reign was a great seafaring expedition to the fabled Land of Punt, on the Horn of Africa (probably around modern Eritrea or Somalia). A fleet sailed down the Red Sea and returned laden with treasures Egypt had not seen for generations: gold, ebony, ivory, exotic animals, and above all incense and myrrh — including live frankincense trees transplanted into Egyptian soil. The voyage was so important to her that she had it carved in vivid detail across the walls of her mortuary temple, where the reliefs can still be seen.

Hatshepsut was one of the most prolific builders of the New Kingdom. Her masterpiece is the mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari in western Thebes — known as Djeser-Djeseru, "the Holy of Holies" — a breathtaking series of colonnaded terraces rising from the desert floor and merging into the limestone cliffs behind it. Designed by her chief minister and architect Senenmut, it is still considered one of the finest buildings of the ancient world. At the great Temple of Karnak she raised pairs of towering granite obelisks — one still stands nearly 30 metres high — and the famous Unfinished Obelisk in the Aswan quarries is associated with her ambitions. Through these monuments she glorified the god Amun, asserted her kingship, and employed thousands across the land.

After Hatshepsut's death around 1458 BC, something strange happened: roughly twenty years later, her successor Thutmose III set about erasing her from the record — chiselling her name and image off monuments, toppling her statues, and walling up her obelisks. Once thought to be personal revenge, this damnatio memoriae is now widely read as a calculated political act, meant to smooth the line of male succession and remove the precedent of a female king, rather than an expression of hatred. The campaign was so thorough that Hatshepsut was nearly forgotten for over three thousand years. Only when scholars deciphered the hieroglyphs at Deir el-Bahari in 1822, and later explored her tomb (found in 1903), was her extraordinary story pieced back together — and her mummy was finally identified in 2007.

• Who she was: the fifth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty and Egypt's most powerful female ruler.
• Arabic name: حتشبسوت (Hatshepsut).
• Reign: c. 1479–1458 BC (about 21 years).
• Family: daughter of Thutmose I; married Thutmose II; ruled alongside (and before) Thutmose III; daughter Neferure.
• Ruled as king: adopted full pharaonic regalia, including the ceremonial false beard.
• Famous voyage: the trade expedition to the Land of Punt — incense, myrrh trees, gold, and exotic goods.
• Greatest monument: the mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari (Djeser-Djeseru), designed by Senenmut.
• Also built: giant obelisks at Karnak; linked to the Unfinished Obelisk at Aswan.
• Erased & rediscovered: defaced by Thutmose III ~20 years later; rediscovered from 1822 onward.

Sources include National Geographic, PBS's Egypt's Golden Empire, and historical accounts of Hatshepsut's reign, the Punt expedition, and Deir el-Bahari.