Throughout the history of the Egyptians there where several women who came to rule their people, but none was brave or ambitious enough to assume the title of King and Pharaoh, except for Queen Hatshepsut, or more accurately put…. King Hatshapsu (dropping the “t” of the end of her name made it a masculine name instead). Before Hatshepsut there where queens who had ruled Egypt but until then ….never a female Pharaoh!

Contrary to any ancient culture, where women were expected to stay at home, women of ancient Egypt had a lot more freedom. They were allowed to own property and hold official positions, they were also given rights to inherit from deceased family members and were allowed to present their cases in court. They also played a cardinal role in the religion, where religion was integral to a ruler’s role so royal women acted as priestesses and officiated at the rites in temples.

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt between 1479-1458/57. She was a unique and intelligent individual, who brainstormed, not only to legitimize her position as pharaoh but also make herself god-like, to win the complete approval of her subjects. Due to her boldness she may have been the first to start a Feminist movement to seek out prominent women from antiquity and publicized their achievements.

Ma’at-ka-Ra Hatshepsut was the eldest daughter to Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose, the first king and queen of the Thutoside clan of the eighteenth dynasty. Upon the death of her father, Hatshepsut married her half-brother, Thutmose II, and assumed the title of Great Royal Wife. They had one daughter, Neferure, who Hatshepsut groomed to take over the roles she played as queen. Upon his death Thutmose II left behind a very young Thutmose III (born to Isis a lesser wife of Thutmose II) to succeed him. Being too young to assume the tasks of pharaoh, Hatshepsut became his regent not long before she proclaimed herself Pharaoh.

After the Oracle of Amun pronounced that the will of the god Amun was that Hatshepsut should become Pharaoh; she adopted many male attributes. She assumed all the regalia and symbols of the pharaonic office: the Khat head cloth, topped with the uraeus, the traditional false beard and shendyt kilt.

She ruled for about twenty years gloriously, during which Egypt witnessed a long period of prosperity. She was also known to be a strong, fair and just ruler. Besides being the only female pharaoh to erect the most monuments during her reign, the projects she commissioned took Ancient Egyptian architecture to higher standards that set the calibre for the pharaohs that succeeded her. The first and the most beautiful of the temples in the Valley of the Kings was her great mortuary temple Djeser-Djeseru. It is the focal point of the complex at Deir al-Bahari on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor.

Although she was known to be a peaceful queen, she made some conquests notably the expedition to the Land of Punt (perhaps present day Somalia) She re-established trading relations that were lost during a foreign occupation by the Hyksos, bringing great wealth to Egypt. The expedition to Punt brought back myrrh, frankincense, woods, sweet-smelling resin, ivory, spices, gold, ebony, ivory and aromatic trees, this was the first ever recorded attempt to replant foreign trees.

Hatshepsut was also the first Pharaoh to erect an obelisk; she had two erected in front of her temple yet only one still stands today, as the tallest surviving ancient obelisk on Earth. She is also the owner of “the Unfinished Obelisk” in Aswan as it establishes how obelisks were quarried.

With all her success and accomplishments she disappeared from history after about twenty years of her reign. To this day no one knows how and when she died exactly, or where her mummy is buried. However, if the recent identification of her mummy in KV60 is correct, CT scans of the mummy indicate that she died of metastatic bone cancer in her 50s.

Depicted in many novels and films, whether as a wicked step mother or a romantic amiable queen, it is undeniable that she was the first great woman in History!

About the Author:
Gawhara Hanem
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Egypt Tours

Best known for being called “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World,” and one of Egypt’s more powerful queens to have ruled. Her acclaim is credited to her iconic bust that is on display at The Berlin’s Altes Museum.

The lovely sculptured face of Queen Nefertiti was found in the workshop of the famed sculptor Thutmose. In 1913, the German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, listed it among his findings but mentioned that it was a worthless piece of gypsum and hid it in a box, in an attempt to smuggle it out of Egypt. It now attracts half a million visitors yearly and is regarded as a supreme artifact of the Pharaonic era.

The bust is in fact made of limestone and the queen’s features were painted on and still exhibit their vivid colors. She is depicted with full lips embellished with bold red. The perfectly preserved sculpture is flawed except for a broken left ear and the missing crystal inlay of the left eye. Both her eyelids and brows are outlined in black. A significant feature of the bust is her gracefully swan-like elongated neck and the yellow-brown color of her smooth skin. The flat-top crown on her head and her necklace display vibrant colors that set this bust apart from any other. 

Queen Nefertiti (1370 BC - 1330 BC) became queen when she was fifteen years old, when she married King Amenhotep IV (later changing his name to Akhenaton). She reigned along side her husband for a mere 12 years but together they managed to make many fundamental changed to Egyptian history.

Little is known about Queen Nefertiti before she came to the thrown, yet she continues to captivate the world with her beauty!

The name Nefertiti means, “The beautiful, one has arrived,” and when she later changed it to consolidate her husband’s newly adopted religion, she called herself, Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti meaning, “The Aten is radiant of radiance [because] the beautiful one has arrived”. She carried many titles, as seen from an inscription at the Temple of Karnak:

Heiress, Great of Favors, Possessed of Charm, Exuding Happiness, Mistress of Sweetness, beloved one, soothing the king’s heart in his house, soft-spoken in all, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt, Great King’s Wife, whom he loves, Lady of the Two Lands, Nefertiti’.

The major change that Pharaoh Akhenaton and his Queen Nefertiti brought to their people was a new religion. Different from their polytheistic religion, they introduced only one god, Aten, the sun disc, and only through the royal pair could the full blessings of the god bestow the people. They also moved the capitol of Egypt from Thebes, where it had been for centuries, north to Akhetaon in Tell- el Amarna. For these reasons they were fairly unloved by their subjects.

King Akhenaton was known to have suffered form Marfan Syndrome (characterized by unusually long limbs), but Queen Nefertiti devoted herself to loving and caring for her deformed and sickly husband. It was very evident that the pair was inseparable and very much in love, shown in many pictures to be embracing. Nefertiti bore six daughters within 10 years of her marriage. Two of her daughters became queens of Egypt, and she was also step-mother to Tutankhamen. 

Queen Nefertiti was like no other queen of Egypt, she may have been one of the most powerful queens to have ever ruled. She was shown to be wearing the crown of a pharaoh and also depicted in scenes of battle, something that was only reserved for male rulers.

But after the 14th year of Akhenaton’s rule, Nefertiti disappears from view. To date, the mummy of this famous and iconic queen has not been found. The ultimate fate of Nefertiti’s body has long been a subject of curiosity and speculation. There maybe several assumptions for this, the most simple of which is that she died. It is also thought that she may have assumed a male identity and ruled after her husband’s death until his predecessor Tutankhamen came of age and took the thrown. 

Mystery surrounds Nefertiti, the Sun Queen, but with the many still undiscovered treasures hidden in Egypt, we never know what the future may reveal.

About the Author:
Gawhara Hanem
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Egypt Tours

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Search for an answer to this enigmatic question, I realized that getting a clear response was not going to be possible so I did my reading looking into all the theories no matter how much they made me laugh! The notion that someone can actually believe, publicly announce and expect to be taken seriously something bizarre and unsupported was beyond me. But then again I could be the one in the dark to one of the most unanswered questions in history. So which came first the Pyramids or the Sphinx?!

As a child, I remember always getting excited over the idea of going to the Pyramids. I still feel dwarfed standing at the base of Khufu and looking up. The stone block I’m standing in front of is much taller than I am! So how did they ever build such a thing? How long would it take to get to the top? You could probably see the world from up there!

Although there are records as to how and who built the Pyramids there is little to tell about the Sphinx, the largest surviving statue from the ancient world. It is sculpted out of a large limestone bedrock, a stone soft enough to yield to copper chisels and stone hammers, common Egyptian tools. The actual mystery of the Sphinx at Giza pertains to its very identity. The Sphinx has a head of a man, wearing the Egyptian headdress and a spiraling beard, and having the body of a lion, with two paws resting beneath the head and chest. It rises up 66 ft (20 m) high and the resting leonine body stretching 241 ft (73.5 m) behind. The Sphinx has been most often associated with the Pharaoh Khafre (2558–2532 B.C.), who is represented by and is presumably buried in the second largest of the three Pyramids at Giza. At least two statues of Khafre have been found that bear a striking resemblance to the face of the Sphinx.

The Sphinx at Giza faces due east with a small temple between its paws and is referred to in some Egyptian hieroglyphics as Hamachis, the god of the rising Sun. Later, Hamachis evolved into the name Hor-em-Akhet and until 1925 it was still buried up to the neck in sand.

Believed to be built during the Fourth Dynasty at the same time as the Pyramids, the date of the Sphinx still remains a controversy and even in ancient times, some sources dated it as preceding the Pyramids. It has under gone several restorations even during ancient times. After being abandoned from around 2650 B.C to 1500 B.C King Thutmose IV of the 18th Dynasty, ordered the rescue of the Sphinx from being buried by the desert sands. Ramesses II may have also performed restoration work on the Great Sphinx. But the first modern excavation project was in 1817, lead by Captain Caviglia uncovering the chest, but the Sphinx was finally dug out completely in 1925. The last of the restoration project took place as recently as 2006.

Trying to dig up information about the Sphinx unearthed a lot. Going through all of the theories, suppositions, rumors or even psychics made me realize that common logic was dry and uninteresting compared to the fascinating controversies of more ancient unknown civilizations or even aliens being responsible. Even the most recent claim by the geologists that the Sphinx dates as far back as 9000 years ago probably at the end of the Ice age was based solely on the geological evidence, rather than information from hieroglyphics or other histories. The suppositions are based around the weathering and the water erosion that the limestone has witnessed, not of the making of the actual statue.

Then there are claims of an advanced civilization that once thrived on the continent of Antarctica before it was frozen over during a global catastrophe at the end of the last Ice Age. Or of extraterrestrials coming down to earth to build this monument because mere humans where unable to accomplish such a enormous achievement. To me this seems more of an insult to all of humanity than to the ancient Egyptians that actually toiled to have there names remembered over the passing of time.

But really the most interesting of all concepts was that of a psychic Edgar Cayce! He prophesied a secret passageway leads from one of the Sphinx’s paws to its right shoulder where there exists a “Hall of Records” that contains the wisdom of a lost civilization and the history of the world. During a trance he received reading that the legendary civilization of Atlantis was responsible for many of the accomplishments of ancient Egypt, claiming that the Great Pyramid and Sphinx were built by Atlanteans refugees.

The ancient Egyptians lived, and died building the Sphinx and the Pyramids, leaving behind their documentations, tools, graves and bones. Trying to find another unknown civilization to give credits to is illogical lacking common sense and denigrating to its people. The pyramids are human achievements and one of the Nova projects called “This Old Pyramid” demonstrated that it was actually attempted to construct a scaled down version of the Great Pyramid using techniques which are inscribed in ancient Egyptian temples.

About the Author:
Gawhara Hanem
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Egypt Tours