The Historians' History of the World 01

We see her represented on Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her chin. She retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, and also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the betrothed of Amen—Khnem Amen. Her father united her while still young to her brother Tehutimes, who appears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. When Tehutimes I died, Egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of affairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office: but Hatshepsu, while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp to her husband, kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands. The portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as having refined features, with a proud and energetic expression. The oval of the face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep set under the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed. She governed with so firm a hand that neither Egypt nor its foreign vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves from her authority. One raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punished a rising of the Shasu in central Syria, while the usual expeditions maintained order among the peoples of Ethiopia, and quenched any attempt which they might make to revolt. When in the second year of his reign the news was brought to Tehutimes II that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposed upon them, he “became furious as a panther,” and assembling his troops, set out for war without further delay. The presence of the king with the army filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to their attempt at rebelling. Tehutimes II carried on the works begun by his father, but did not long survive him. The mask on his coffin represents him with a smiling and amiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes which show his descent from the Pharaohs of the XIIth Dynasty. By his marriage with Hatshepsu, Tehutimes left daughters only, but he had one son, also a Tehutimes,[3] by a woman of low birth, perhaps merely a slave, whose name was Aset. Hatshepsu proclaimed this child her successor, for his youth and humble parentage could not excite her jealousy. She betrothed him to her one surviving daughter, Hatshepsitu II, and having thus settled the succession in the main line, she continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who was still a minor, as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother.

Her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing condition of things was owing to the ability of her political administration or to her fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. She pressed forward the work of building with great activity, under the direction of her architect Senmut, not only at Deir-el-Bahari, but at Karnak, and indeed everywhere in Thebes. The plans of the building had been arranged under Tehutimes I, and their execution had been carried out so quickly that in many cases the queen had merely to see to the sculptural ornamentation on the all-but-completed walls. This work, however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according to Egyptian custom, to attribute the whole structure to herself, and the opinion she had of her own powers is exhibited with great naïveté in her inscriptions. [A famous incident of her reign was the sending out of an expedition across the Red Sea in quest of incense.]

Tehutimes II

[ca. 1530-1520 B.C.]