A Visual Tour of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Take a virtual tour to see our favorite statues of famous pharaohs and tomb relics.

If you can’t actually visit the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, do the next best thing: Virtually tour some of the exhibits below

It’s bad enough that I’ve been self-quarantined inside our home for a week and a half now, with no end to this isolation in sight. On top of that, I seem to have contracted the dreaded coronavirus, with lingering symptoms of COVID-19. 

To make matters worse, I’ve had to cancel a mini-sabbatical to Spain, where I had planned to visit my good friends Jo and José in Málaga, fulfilling my dream of experiencing Semana Santa and touring the colorful towns of the South of Spain, with their charming Moorish influence. 

Plus, it’s looking as if Duke and I will also have to forgo our trip to Athens and the Greek Isles this spring as well. 

“Most of us find ourselves looking for ways to live vicariously, to continue to explore the world — even if that means virtually. ”

Like many of you, travel is what we look forward to. In many ways, it’s what makes life worth living. Planning a trip abroad gives Duke and me something to dream about. In a time when the world wasn’t so chaotic, our future travels would be what got us through tough times. Now we have no idea when we’ll be able to take a vacation again. The world is on lock-down, frozen in place. It’s not a comfortable feeling, and the real extent of the crisis might not be apparent for weeks or even months.

With so much time on our hands, most of us find ourselves looking for ways to live vicariously, to continue to explore the world — even if that means virtually. 

Here’s a photographic tour of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, showcasing some of our favorites statues, sarcophagi and other works of art. (To get a feel for the delightfully dilapidated museum, read Duke’s write-up.)

A gray granite statue of Ramesses II as a child protected by the god Horus, depicted as a falcon.

The fragmented sculpture of the goddess Mut and her husband, the chief god Amun, is composed of 79 pieces. The head of the goddess was discovered by French Egyptologist August Mariette in 1873. Other parts were unearthed during additional excavations in the Temple of Amun-Re at Karnak and sent to the museum, where they were reassembled.

The colossal figures of Amenhotep III, who ruled around 1386-1353 BCE, and his wife Tiye survey the great hall of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. The statue was discovered at Medinet Habu. Tiye, whose arm wraps around her husband's waist, is the same size as the king, demonstrating her equal status as a powerful and influential queen.

This statue, carved in a variety of sandstone known as graywacke, shows the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Menkaure wearing the crown of Upper Egypt. The king, who was born in 2532 BCE, is flanked by the goddess Hathor (left), crowned with a solar disc between cows horns, and Anput (right), the personification of the 17th nome, or district, of Upper Egypt. Note the jackal above her, referring to her husband, the god Anubis.

A realistic-looking sycamore wood figure with white quartz and resin eyes from the Fifth Dynasty, depicting a khry-heb, or lector priest, named Ka-aper. He was responsible for transcribing religious texts and reciting hymns in the temple and at ritual festivals.

Skeleton of a dog. Ancient Egyptians were known to sacrifice and mummify a variety of animals.

An alabaster statue of the high priestess Amenirdis, who held the title of God’s Wife of Amun during the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. She’s wearing a diadem of cobras and holding a small whip, or flagellum, bent to resemble a lily.

A row of small stone sarcophagi stand in front of a chipped wall typical at the Egyptian Museum

A statue of Meryre and his wife Iniuia. Meryre began his career under the reign of Akhenaten, the so-called Heretic King who ruled from 1353-1336 BCE in the Eighteenth Dynasty, as steward and scribe of the Great Temple of the Aten in Armana, Akhenaten’s capital city, and later as high priest at the temple of Aten at Memphis.

Dwarves commanded respect in Ancient Egypt, thought to possess divine gifts. One of the much-loved gods of the time, Bes (right), was depicted as a dwarf.

A granite sarcophagus lid of a dwarf named Djeho from the Thirtieth Dynasty. Inscriptions on the lid indicate that he was employed to dance at burial ceremonies connected to the sacred Apis bull.

This painted limestone head of Hatshepsut originally belonged to one of Osiride statues resembling the god of the underworld, Osiris, at Deir el-Bahari, the female pharaoh’s mortuary temple.

This granite sphinx was one of several that once stood at Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple. This remarkable woman ruled Egypt, first as co-regent for her nephew/stepson Thutmose III and subsequently as pharaoh.

Another sphinx of Hatshepsut, this one painted limestone. It’s believed to have originally stood at her mortuary temple. Unusual for Ancient Egypt, her face is surrounded by a leonine mane.

A detail of the outermost shrine that enclosed the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. Composed of gilt plaster over wood with a faience inlay, it bears protective symbols: the djed, or spine of Osiris, and the tjet, or Isis knot.

A diorite statue of the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khefren, who may have ruled around 2558-2532 BCE, seated on a throne, protected by the outstretched wings of a falcon, a symbol of the god Horus. The eagle is on the back, so you unfortunately can’t see it from this angle.

A statue of the lion-headed goddess of war, Sekhmet. Don’t let her calm expression fool you: She could be violent and was given various titles, including Mistress of Dread, Lady of Slaughter and She Who Mauls.

This compact granite block statue depicts Senenmut, the favored official and director of building works under Hatshepsut, who reigned from 1479-1458 BCE, during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Senenmut held many roles, one of which was tutor to Hatshepsut’s daughter, Princess Neferure. The strange style of statuary was common for tutors. The head of the young royal emerges from Senenmut’s cloaked, protective form.

Model soldiers carrying shields and spears from the tomb of a pharaoh. Fun fact: The bravest soldiers were given amulets shaped like flies, to show that they had stung the enemy.

Funerary models carved of wood show scenes from everyday life. Placed in a pharaoh’s tomb, they assured that he would have all he desired, including food and drink, in the afterlife.

A gray granite statue of Tutankhamun depicted as Khonsu, a moon god whose name means Wanderer, son of Amun and Mut. The Boy King wears the sidelock braid of youth and is holding a crook, flail and djed pillar.

A 2nd millennium BCE funerary stele found at Abydos that may or may not depict a ruler named Sobekhotep and his wife.

This red granite statue depicts Ramesses II (left) and the creator god, Ptah (right). Ptah held a close relationship to the primeval god Tatenen, whose name means Risen Earth, referring to the primordial mound that emerged from the watery chaos at the beginning of the world. –Wally

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10 More Museums You Can Virtually Tour

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The Egyptian Museum
Tahrir Square Rd.
Cairo, Egypt

The Many Layers of Luxor Temple

The town of Luxor now surrounds this ancient complex built as a festival site by Amenhotep III and added on to by Hatshepsut, King Tut and Alexander the Great.

The modern city of Luxor has been built around the ancient temple complex

Americans never wanted a monarch like our friends across the pond, against whom we rebelled to set up a democracy. So we don’t know what it’s like to get caught up in a king’s or queen’s jubilee as the Brits do. 

It was a similar type of celebration that led to Luxor Temple. Amenhotep III, having been on the throne for 30 years, was due a Sed festival, an ancient rite to represent the rejuvenation of the pharaoh and renew his contract with the gods. Not every pharaoh made it three decades on the throne — at a time when that was pretty much the life expectancy — and Amenhotep was determined to celebrate his jubilee unlike any of his forebears. 

“Don’t miss the carvings of none other than Alexander the Great worshipping Amun-Min, whose massive hard-on points toward the legendary, bisexual conqueror.”

Luxor Temple was an important place of worship for 3,000 years!

He looked three miles south of Karnak Temple and directly across the Nile from his mortuary temple at a small shrine that acted as the “southern residence” of the composite god Amun-Ra. The town of Luxor, known as Thebes in ancient times, now surrounds the temple complex.

This colonnade was designed to resemble bundles of papyrus, an important plant for the Egyptians, used to make paper, sandals and other essentials

Amenhotep III had his architects design a vast open court with double rows of columns that resemble bundles of papyrus. The pharaoh was becoming more and more interested in solar worship, so he instructed that no roof cover this structure, allowing the sun’s rays to fill the space. With electrum walls and silver furnishings, you can only imagine how blinding the court would have been on a sunny day, filling worshippers with a sense of awe at the power of Amun-Ra.

Because they make noise at sunrise, as if in greeting, baboons were connected to sun worship for the Ancient Egyptians

Son of God

But Egyptologists say that the most important room in Luxor Temple is a small one at the back, behind the shrine where the solar barque, the god’s vessel, was kept, and next to an offering room. In this seemingly unobtrusive chamber, Amenhotep III rewrote his history (a favorite pastime of the pharaohs). He tells the tale of how his mother, Mutemwia, was visited in her bedchamber by what looked like her husband, Thutmose IV, but was actually the chief deity, Amun-Ra. 

The inscription at Luxor is a much more graphic recounting than the divine parentage story Hatshepsut inscribed in her mortuary temple. Amenhotep seems to delight in the details of his mother’s arousal:

She awoke because of the god’s scent and cried out with pleasure before his majesty. … She rejoiced at the sight of his beauty, and love of him suffused her body. …

“How great is your power!” … Your dew permeates all my limbs.” And then the majesty of this god did all that he desired with her.

Amenhotep-ruler-of-Thebes is the name of this child that I have placed in your womb. … He shall exercise potent kingship in this entire land. … He shall rule the Two Lands like Ra forever.

Speaking of graphic depictions, the Amun worshipped here was conflated with the fertility god Min and was depicted with an impressive erection. Don’t miss the carvings here that show none other than Alexander the Great worshipping this god, whose massive hard-on points toward the legendary, bisexual conqueror.

Alexander the Great, crowned as pharaoh, worships Amun in the form of Min, who has one arm, one leg and one giant erection

Luxor Temple became the primary stage for kingly rituals, including the Opet festival, when the Amun statue at Karnak would come for a visit.

An avenue of sphinxes once stretched for two miles, connecting Luxor to Karnak Temple

Various pharaohs put their stamp on Luxor, as seen in the Court of Ramesses

A Favorite of the Pharaohs

Over the course of 3,000 years, pharaohs added onto or rebuilt the temple. It’s interesting that Amenhotep III is known as the Sun King, and that his son, Amenhotep IV,  later chose the name of Akhenaten when he infamously shifted worship away from the pantheon led by Amun to a single deity, Aten, the sun itself. It seems the son took the father’s solar passion to an extreme. 

While Amenhotep laid the foundation for a colonnade in front of his sun court, it was completed by Akhenaten’s short-lived son, the famous Tutankhamun. Inside the massive hall, columns soar 60 feet into the air, and six striding colossi wowed visitors. 

Unlike so many other temples of Ancient Egypt, Luxor is open-aired, highlighting its connection to the sun

Ramesses II, who never shied away from an opportunity to proclaim his greatness, added on to Luxor, installing a forecourt, a pylon gateway and statues out front. To obtain the construction materials needed, he engaged in another preferred pastime of the pharaohs: razing and raiding the temples and pyramids of ages past. 

Ramesses shifted the axis of the temple to the east to align it with Karnak, to which it was connected by a sphinx-lined processional avenue.

You can see where the ancient stone wall ends and the new mosque built atop it starts

Religions Built Atop One Another 

Luxor, like most of the temples of Ancient Egypt was at some point buried in the shifting sands of the desert. But at no sight is this more clear than here, where you can literally see the different colors of the rock showing what was buried for millennia. 

Old meets new and Islam meets Ancient Egyptian at Luxor

You can also see how the complex was converted to various Christian churches in the 4th to 6th centuries, when Romans incorporated the entire complex into a castrum, or fortified military encampment. Icons of various holy figures can still be seen painted on one of the walls. 

In the late 3rd century, during the reign of Diocletian, this section of Luxor became a Roman legionary shrine. Part of the fresco can still be seen

With the rise of Islam, Muslims built a mosque atop one of the churches here. This striking place of worship sits perched atop one of Luxor’s surrounding walls and is still in use to this day. 

Venture to the back of Luxor Temple to see statues of King Tut and Queen Ankhesenpaaten

A Bizarre Ritual Out Back

While we wandered the open-air structures at the back of the temple, past two pairs of decaying statues, an Egyptian policeman approached us. The ubiquitous machine gun strapped across his chest that never failed to put me ill at ease was counteracted by his beaming smile. 

He signaled for us to follow him. A bit nervous but curious, Duke and I followed him into a nook in the far corner of the complex. The policeman gestured for our phone to take a picture. With Duke’s iPhone in hand, he began a series of strange choreography, intertwining our fingers of one hand and having us touch the ancient stone with the other. (I know you’re not supposed to touch the monuments, but when an armed guard tells you to do something, you obey. Sure enough, we weren’t the first to follow this bizarre ritual — the stone was worn, polished by the oils of countless hands.) He snapped a shot, then had us hold our hands toward each other in a prayer gesture, like we were about to play pattycake. Snap, another picture. And finally, he had us keep our hands in that position but place them against the wall in the same spot we had previously touched. 

An armed policeman ran Duke and Wally through a series of strange motions — though they have no idea what it all meant

It was all quite amusing, though we’re not sure what exactly was the desired outcome. Perhaps it was an ancient spell for fertility — and if that’s the case, what a waste doing it on a couple of gays. 

We offered the cop a tip, known as baksheesh in Arabic, which he gladly pocketed. 

Admission to Luxor Temple costs 140 Egyptian pounds, or less than $9 at the time of this writing. –Wally

 

Were Hatshepsut and Senenmut Lovers?

From speculation that he was gay to that infamous graffiti, we investigate Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s most-trusted advisor, who rose from nothing to become one of the most powerful men at the time. 

Senenmut was certainly Hatshepsut’s right-hand man — but did their relationship extend into the bedroom?

Were they or weren’t they? Egyptologists have debated whether or not Hatshepsut, the woman who became pharaoh, and her right-hand man, Senenmut, were an item. 

Senenmut, who was most likely about 20 years older than Hatshepsut, started out as a nobody. He didn’t come from a respected family — in fact, he was the son of a low-level official in a backwater village 15 miles from the capital city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor). Yet somehow he was chosen for a position at the palace, overseer of the large hall. In this role, Senenmut was in charge of the audience hall, where the king and queen would sit upon their thrones and receive visitors and hear petitions. And that was just the beginning.

“Archaeologists found a drawing of a man and woman having sex doggie-style.

Some think it was a political satire of who really wore the pants, so to speak, in the relationship between Hatshepsut and Senenmut. ”

Senenmut was soon promoted to overseer of the two granaries of the god Amun, a position that gave him access to great wealth and made him an economic authority. In addition to having control of the religious storehouse of wealth, Senenmut also became steward of the king’s and queen’s palaces, thereby controlling vast portions of the Ancient Egyptian economy. 

It’s hard to imagine how one man could do so many things, but Senenmut must have proved himself imminently capable, for he continued to collect titles, becoming responsible for more and more aspects of the state religion and government.

Royal tutors like Senenmut were depicted in this strange, blockish style — perhaps to emphasize their role as protectors of their charges

Wet Nurse for the Brain: Tutor to Neferure

One of the aspects of his illustrious career of which Senenmut was most proud was his role as tutor to Thutmose II and Hatshepset’s daughter, Neferure. It seems he wasn’t allowed to depict himself in the presence of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, but he commissioned numerous statues showing him as tutor to little Neferure — a way of declaring his connection to the royal family.

“The title for the royal tutor in Egyptian is mena nesut, which essentially means ‘male breast for the king’; that is to say, it is the masculine version of a wet nurse whose milk provided an infant with nourishment and protection against disease,” Kara Cooney writes in The Woman Who Would Be King, a marvelous account of Hatshepsut’s life. “The Egyptians believed that a wet nurse became related to her charge through the milk she fed the baby — in a sense, artificially creating blood relations.” 

In a similar sense, a male tutor nourished the mind of his young charge, pretty much becoming part of the family. Senenmut was such a father figure to young Neferure that many have speculated that she was actually his child instead of sickly Thutmose II’s.

“Much ink has been spilled on conjectures about the relationship between Hatshepsut and Senenmut,” Cooney writes, “however, there is no clear indication that Senenmut was anything more than Neferure’s tutor and protector, albeit a very close one.”  

Does this naughty graffiti show Senenmut taking King Hatshepsut from behind?

The Case of the Doggy-Style Graffito

After Thutmose II died, Hatshepset’s nephew Thutmose III became pharaoh. Because he was still a child, Hatshepsut acted as regent for the Egyptian throne, ultimately declaring herself co-pharaoh. 

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Hatshepsut led a colorful early life, including a period when she acted as a “wife” to the chief god of the Egyptian pantheon

SHE DID WHAT TO THE STATUE?! 

9 Fascinating Facts About the Early Life of Hatshepsut

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As ruler of Egypt at a time of great prosperity, Hatshepsut launched numerous construction projects, including the amazingly modern-looking Deir el-Bahari, her funerary temple, in the mid-1400s BCE. A crude drawing found nearby has launched a thousand speculations on the relationship between Hatshepsut and Senenmut. 

Senenmut wanted to be close to his queen in the afterlife. His tomb chapel sits in the hills overlooking Deir el-Bahari, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

When archaeologists excavated the tombs in the hills above the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, they were, I’m sure, delighted to find a drawing of a man fucking a woman from behind. Surely this was a political satire of who really wore the pants, so to speak, in the relationship between Hatshepsut and Senenmut. 

But there’s nothing to mark the woman as Hatshepsut — no crown, no label — or anything that points to the man being Senenmut, for that matter. It was just too good of a story to pass up. 

While that famous graffito might not reveal that the pharaoh and her trusted advisor were intimate, there are other clues: Senenmut’s image was sneakily included in parts of Hashepsut’s mortuary temple, and his sarcophagus was of a matching pair with Hatshepsut’s.

There’s one other fact that raises suspicions about Senenmut’s connection to his female king, Cooney points out: “Not one of his dozens of statues, reliefs, and temple depictions records the existence of a family of his own,” she writes. “Without a doubt, if anything should make us wonder about the nature of his relationship with Hatshepsut, it is his lack of a wife. All Egyptian elites married.” 

Even if Senenmut was gay — and there might not have been anything wrong with that! — he probably would have still married. Did Hatshepsut just want him as a lover all to herself?

Was Senenmut Gay?

Perhaps Senenmut just preferred the company of men. “The ranks of Egyptian elites undoubtedly included some men with same-sex desires, and some of these men might even have been able to talk of their sexual interests openly,” Cooney writes. 

But assuming that was the case, evidence indicates that gays in Ancient Egypt would have still married, in the hopes of having sons to pass on their legacy. 

Maybe Hatshepsut insisted she have Senenmut all to herself.

Portraits found in Senenmut’s tomb present a less-flattering, probably more-realistic view of what he looked like

What Did Senenmut Look Like?

The statues of Senenmut as tutor to Princess Neferure show him as young and idealized. But the portraits in his tomb are probably more accurate: They “show him as a timeworn man with a hooked nose, lines etched into the skin around his mouth, a flabby, weak chin, and fleshy lips,” Cooney writes, adding, “If these latter images are to be believed, he was not a handsome man.”

Despite being one of the greatest royal advisors in Ancient Egypt, Senenmut was left with an unfinished tomb and an empty, shattered sarcophagus

A Sad End for Senenmut

Whether or not Hatshepsut and Senenmut were lovers, it’s obvious he wanted to be near her in the eternity of the afterlife. While his tomb chapel sits in the hills overlooking the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, he planned to have his body buried in a separate tomb closer to hers. To have a separate location for the tomb, instead of digging it below the funerary chapel, was a right that had previously been reserved for royalty. 

There’s evidence Senenmut lived for about 20 years after Hatshepsut’s death, but no records show that he retained his high position. It’s believed he lost much of his prestige after his beloved perished — and Thutmose III’s subsequent attempt to erase Hatshepsut’s kingship from history certainly wouldn’t have helped. 

Thutmose III, the a-hole who tried to wipe Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s reign from history

Senenmut’s tomb was left unfinished and sealed without his corpse. His sarcophagus was dragged up to his tomb chapel in the Theban hills — though his mummy was never put inside it. The sarcophagus, constructed of quartzite, a durable material, was found smashed into pieces, a task that “would have required extensive labor and great expense,” Cooney writes. “Someone really wanted him disgraced.”

A man who had been that powerful for so long, who was an essential companion to an unconventional pharaoh, surely made many enemies along the way. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there were those who hated him enough to deface his tomb chapel and went to great effort to annihilate his sarcophagus. 

Ancient Egyptians believed that your tomb needed depictions of you so your spirit could find its way back to the preserved corpse each morning throughout eternity. Destroying a mummy and sarcophagus was a way of leaving poor Senenmut’s spirit wandering aimlessly for the rest of time, homeless and separated from all the wealth he had accrued in his impressive life. –Wally

The Glorious Decay of Karnak Temple

The sprawling temple complex in Luxor is considered one of the greatest architectural feats of all time.

Areas like this on the massive temple grounds of Karnak evoked Ancient Rome for Wally

For much of the history of Ancient Egypt, Karnak was the epicenter of worship, situated in the great city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor). Over 3,000 years ago, 30 or so pharaohs each wanted to put his or her stamp upon the temple, adding structures and elements, on and on through the centuries. In less-prosperous times, like the reign of Ramesses VI, the pharaoh simply recarved the additions made by his predecessor, Ramesses IV, and claimed them as his own. And Horemheb replaced King Tut’s name with his own on several monuments at Karnak, in a bid to sever all ties with the heretical lineage of Akhenaton. 

The site sprawled, and today it is the largest surviving religious complex in the world.

“The great temple complex of Karnak was where Hatshepsut first started her genderbending iconography — all before she declared herself pharaoh.”

So much of Karnak as it is today began during the reign of that fascinating figure Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who ruled during the 15th century BCE. Before her, Karnak was mostly mud brick but she embarked upon an ambitious construction program that included rebuilding Karnak with sandstone, making it more permanent and the basis of the massive complex we can still explore to this day. 

The scale of these massive columns is difficult to describe without experiencing it yourself

Wally loves exploring ancient temples so much, he just had to jump for joy

I’ve mentioned before that a large part of the charm of visiting Egypt is that each temple has something utterly unique about it, and for Karnak it’s the massive scale of the site. In addition, because its stones were plundered for other construction projects, much of the complex lies in a semi-ruined state, which evoked Ancient Rome to me. It’s fun to clamber past large fragments of stone as you explore the temple.

Rows of sphinxes welcome you to Karnak

A Tour of Karnak

We call the temple Karnak today, but that name came from a nearby village, el-Karnak. In ancient times it was known as Ipetisut, “the Most Select of Places.” The main part of the temple was dedicated to that great god, Amun (aka Amon, Amen), who was responsible for fertility and whom Egyptians trusted to keep their country prosperous.

Other, smaller, temples surrounded it, such as the one to Mut, the mother goddess and Amun’s consort.

Admission costs 150 Egyptian pounds, or less than $10, per person. You enter Karnak through an avenue of sphinxes bearing the heads of rams to honor Amun. Between each of their leonine paws, their chins resting on his head, stand small statues of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who commissioned the project.

Ram-headed, lion-bodied sphinxes protect diminutive statues of Ramesses II between their paws

Past these stone guardians, to the right, is a shrine to house the solar barque, used to transport the statue of the god during festivals. Built by Ramesses III, the exterior is lined with statues showing the pharaoh in mummy form with arms crossed to draw a connection with the god Osiris, ruler of the afterlife.

There’s much to explore at Karnak, so be sure to give yourself a couple of hours at least

The Great Hypostyle Hall

Pass under the Second Pylon to come to Karnak’s Great Hypostyle Hall, row upon rows of papyrus columns — 134, in fact. Unlike many other Ancient Egyptian temples, this colonnade is predominantly open-roofed. Blue sky can be seen above, and the sun blazes down upon you. Historians posit that this airy hall was the site of a ceremony called “uniting with the sun” and is supposed to resemble the primeval swamp, part of the creation myth.

The open-air nature of the Great Hypostyle Hall hints at the worship of Amun as a sun god

It’s near impossible to fully comprehend how gigantic some of these columns are, as you stand on the ground, gazing up. But the columns stand six stories high, and it’s said that some of the capitals, or tops, would fit 50 people!

An avenue of sphinxes once led all the way to Luxor Temple, two miles away — and there’s talk of restoring it

In ancient times, statues of deities would have been placed throughout this forest of columns. That’s one of the things that bummed me out most about these temples. As awesome as they are, most are devoid of statuary. I suppose they’ve been relocated to museums around the world — though I wish they had kept at least a few here and there. 

That being said, Karnak is one of the few sites in Egypt where you’ll see quite a few statues on the grounds, though most are of pharaohs not gods. 

You’ll spot quite a few statues as you wander Karnak

Pharaoh after pharaoh repurposed materials to rebuild portions of Karnak over the centuries

Reliefs cover the exterior of the hall, one showing Ramesses II’s Battle of Kadesh, which ended as a stalemate — though the pharaoh proclaimed victory. This was his favorite piece of revisionist history. He depicted his “triumph” at numerous temples, including Karnak, where he had a poem carved that told of his miraculous victory over the Hittites. His army was about to be defeated, but his father, the god Amun, made him invincible — and he single-handedly vanquished 2,500 of his enemies. 

Hatshepsut depicted herself as a pharaoh blessed by the gods on one of her obelisks, now on its side by the Sacred Lake

The great temple complex of Karnak was where Hatshepsut first started her genderbending iconography. A carving shows her wearing a masculine wig and the atef crown, which sported ram’s horns and two feathers — all before she declared herself pharaoh.

It’s truly astounding that the Ancient Egyptians found a way to carve obelisks from a single stone and raise them, where they remain standing, thousands of years later

Obelisks: The Sun Made Stone

Obelisks were the most impressive of architectural feats. Carved from a single block of red granite, the top halves of them were covered in electrum, silver-gold sheets beaten flat. There was no stronger tie to the solar cult than these tall, thin structures resembling the sun’s rays, and, indeed, the metal caught the light, blinding onlookers.

One of the obelisks Hatshepsut erected at the site honors her patron deity, Amun, whom she once served as his “wife.” The inscription reads, in part: “I know that Karnak is Heaven on Earth, the sacred elevation of the first occasion, the eye of the Lord to the Limit, his favorite place, which bears his perfection and gathers his followers.”

Love among the ruins, Wally and Karnak style

A couple of obelisks tower above visitors to this day, and I’m not ashamed to say I was a little freaked out standing beneath them, imagining how easily they could become off-balanced and come crashing down upon us. 

In fact, one obelisk does lie on its side, though it was probably done so purposefully. It’s on these remains, in front of the Sacred Lake, that you can see depictions of Hatshepsut as pharaoh. 

No swimming allowed! The Sacred Lake was where priests would cleanse themselves before rituals

The Sacred Lake

The lake supplied Karnak with water, in part for its priests to cleanse themselves for rituals. 

Nearby is a statue of a scarab (a word that sounds a whole lot cooler than “dung beetle”). Our guide Mamduh told us we should circle it three times for good luck, and a guy on Flickr complains: “Crazy tourists circumambulate — 3 times for luck, 7 times for love, and 10 times for wealth. Makes it hard to get a decent photo.”

Join the throng and walk in circles around the statue of Khepri, the scarab god, by the Sacred Lake. It’s said to be good luck

This is also where you’ll find a café, where we met up with our guide, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. He tried to convince us that hot beverages are better for your body in extreme heat, but we ignored his advice and went for ice-cold waters and ice cream treats.

Hatshepsut and Thutmose III make offerings to Amun in the carvings inside the Red Chapel

Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel

Egyptologists gush about Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel, but I don’t get it. To me, it’s not all that impressive, especially compared to all the other marvels found throughout the country, from massive colonnades to towering statues. It’s just a rectangular-shaped building.

Inside this deep red quartzite chapel in the heart of Karnak, Hatshepsut depicted herself as a male ruler. In fact, her images are difficult to tell apart from those of her nephew and co-pharaoh, Thutmose III.

Much like Hatshepsut’s, King Tut’s reign was stricken from the official record

After Hatshepsut’s death and toward the end of his reign, Thutmose III began a campaign to obliterate his co-ruler’s legacy. At Karnak, he took apart her sacred Red Chapel, leaving its bricks in rubble piles nearby. And at the Eighth Pylon, Thutmose III reassigned two colossal statues of Hatshepsut as pharaoh to his father, Thutmose II. The idea was to connect himself with the traditional patriarchal lineage — and hopefully have everyone forget the unconventional time he shared Egypt’s throne with a woman.

In 1997, the French Institute undertook the challenge of rebuilding what they refer to as la Chapelle Rouge. Today you can visit the Red Chapel, and hopefully you won’t have the space crowded with tourists and a woman doing an Instagram photo shoot out the back.

Beyond the Red Chapel, at the back of Karnak, off to the left, you can wander through Thutmose III’s Festival Hall.

Off to the side of the complex is the Akh-Menou, or Thutomose III’s Festival Hall, featuring tentpole columns

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After exploring the rest of the complex, Duke and I wandered past the Sacred Lake, out to the Tenth Pylon. The gateway was closed off, but beyond was once an avenue of sphinxes that led to the Temple of Mut. The road took a turn and joined up with another avenue of sphinxes, this one leading all the way to Luxor Temple, two miles away. Everyone’s abuzz at the prospect of renovating and reopening that avenue — though it didn’t appear much progress had been made when we visited. –Wally

The temple grounds are a mishmash of architecture from many different pharaohs’ reigns

Much of Karnak lies in ruins

Hatshepsut built the Eighth Pylon, making it one of the oldest parts of the temple complex

Historic renderings of Karnak

Even if you don’t read French, this map can help you navigate the Karnak complex

 

Thutmose III’s Futile Attempt to Erase Hatshepsut’s Legacy

Try as he might, Thutmose III wasn’t able to completely eradicate references to his aunt Hatshepsut as his co-pharaoh. And why did he wait so late in his reign to do so?

Thutmose III tried to get rid of all references to Hatshepsut as pharaoh — but he couldn’t find them all, thankfully!

Hatshepsut was, undeniably, a remarkable woman. A princess who married her half-brother to become his queen. A high priestess (and symbolic wife) of the most powerful of the gods. A queen regent for her nephew (and stepson), Thutmose III. And then, in an unprecedented move, the most senior of two simultaneous pharaohs. She was, as Kara Cooney’s book title proclaims, The Woman Who Would Be King.

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PART ONE: Learn the bizarre aspects of Hatshepsut’s early life

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Duke stands in the ruins of Karnak Temple, a massive complex that Hatshepsut helped build (and, as such, once sported countless depictions of the female king)

Hatshepsut’s reign of 20 years was a time of peace and prosperity, during which the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt experienced stability. Backed by military might, the country received goods from every direction, including Nubian gold. With the coffers full, Pharaoh Hatshepsut embarked on massive construction projects, putting her people to work building tombs and temples. Her image, which became more and more masculine, literally covered the country. 

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PART TWO: How Hatshepsut used genderbending propaganda to become king

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So it was quite ambitious to attempt to obliterate her legacy. But that’s exactly what her one-time co-ruler, Thutmose III, tried to do. The strange part is that he waited about 25 years after Hatshepsut’s death to do so. If he was so upset with his aunt/stepmother, why the delay?

Thankfully, Thutmose III, try as he might, ultimately failed to completely erase all mentions of Hatshepsut as king. Here are some of the fascinating facts that led to this complicated string of events.

Like mother, like daughter: Evidence reveals that Pharaoh Hatshepsut, depicted here as a sphinx, attempted to pave the way for her daughter to ascend the throne

Hatshepset put her daughter Nefrure into the role of God’s Wife — probably hoping she would be her successor.

There are plenty of things a female ruler can do. But having a Great Wife like every male pharaoh before her isn’t one. But she could assign her child to one of the most powerful positions at the time: the high priestess of Amun (aka Amen). 

“And so we see Hatshepsut performing her religious duties in the temple with the God’s Wife — offering up bloody haunches of freshly sacrificed calves, striking ritual chests with sacred instruments, or chanting transformational spells to the sun god on the hour,” Cooney writes.

There’s good evidence that Nefrure was also married to Thutmose III, so in a strange way, she was also acting as wife to her mother simultaneously — at least for ritual events, according to Cooney. “Poor Thutmose III: he had to share absolutely everything with his aunt Hatshepsut, even his own Great Royal Wife,” she writes.

Imagery of a woman at Deir el-Bahari, Hatshepsut’s funerary temple, is believed to be that of Neferure, offering a strong argument that Hatshepsut intended for her daughter to co-rule with Thutmose III as she did. 

Those depictions were rather quickly scratched out or replaced with carvings of Thutmose I, Hatshepsut’s father, as is evident in the Chapel of Anubis at Deir el-Bahari. 

“It is likely that Thutmose III, or the Amen priesthood, or some faction of elites resisted, fearing the creation of another strange male-female coregency, this time beyond the justification of necessity and dynastic security,” Cooney writes. “Hatshepsut apparently relented, bowing to political or religious pressures and ordering the removal of all such images from her funerary temple. Or maybe no one dared speak against the senior king at all. Nefrure might have died during her mother’s reign, ruining all such hope for an heir of her own lineage.”

There are hints that not everyone was too happy about a female pharaoh.

This dissent is evident in numerous carvings throughout Hatshepsut’s funerary temple. They read, “He who shall do her homage shall live. He who shall speak evil in blasphemy of Her Majesty shall die.” 

That being said, “there is absolutely no evidence of insurrection, rebellion or coup during her reign,” Cooney points out. “Even if people were unhappy about Hatshepsut’s rule, they weren’t so dissatisfied that they were going to do anything about it.”

And why should they? All was right with the world during the two decades of Hatshepsut’s reign.

Riddle me this: Why did Thutmose III (seen here as a sphinx) wait so long for the smear campaign against his aunt and co-ruler?

Twenty-five years after Hatshepsut’s death, Thutmose III developed an obsession with erasing his co-pharaoh from history.

I suppose I should be grateful at how much of this amazing ancient culture is left to us. But I still get bummed at the gaps in what we know of its history. And one such gap is that we have no idea how Hatshepsut died. We do know that she reigned from about 1479 BCE until her death in 1458 BCE. 

Thutmose III then became solo pharaoh. But it wasn’t until 25 years into his reign that he began a regime of obliterating all traces of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, starting with her impressive obelisks at Karnak (which were located at a prominent place where all could see). The masculinized depictions of Hatshepsut as king, after a bit of chisel work, were quickly reassigned to Thutmose II or Amenhotep I. 

“It stands as our earliest evidence of Thutmose III’s removing Hatshepsut’s image from the temple landscape in favor of his own father’s,” Cooney writes. “But it was far from the last.”

Only the images of Hatshepsut as pharaoh were modified — those showing her as a queen were left untouched.

Thutmose III, shown in a devotional pose, must have asked the gods to secure the throne for his son

Thutmose III’s long-delayed plan to eradicate all evidence of Hatshepsut as pharaoh most likely was a way to secure the throne for his son.

Why did Thutmose delay for so long before deciding to obliterate Hatshepsut’s legacy? That’s when he was starting to concern himself with his successor. “Thutmose III waited until the end of his reign to systematically erase Hatshepsut’s presence because it was only then that he needed to shore up the legitimate kingship for a son who had no genealogical connection to Hatshpesut’s side of the family,” Cooney explains. “By removing his aunt, whose lofty and pure family connection sullied the aspirations of his own chosen son, Thutmose III was strengthening the history of his dynasty.”

Thank Amun, this smear campaign to eradicate the record of her rule ultimately wasn’t successful: “Despite the breadth and organization of the destruction, Hatshesut had simply built too much and embellished Egypt too wide for Thutmose III to destroy it all,” Cooney writes.

“Hatshepsut’s kingship was a fantastic and unbelievable aberration, but little more than a necessity of the moment,” Cooney wraps up. “Her feminine kingship was always to be perceived as a negative complication by the ancient Egyptians, a problem that could only be reconciled publicly and formally through its obliteration. After all her great accomplishments, despite her unique triumph, her fate was to be erased, expunged, silenced.”

I sure am glad that failed. Many references to Hatshepsut remained undisturbed. I’ve always been drawn to badass women, and Hatshepsut certainly qualifies. –Wally

Pharaoh Hatshepsut

14 ways this powerful Ancient Egyptian woman used genderbending to become a female pharaoh, as revealed in Kara Cooney’s “The Woman Who Would Be King.”

Ancient Egypt wasn’t a bad place or time to be a woman. They had a surprising amount of rights and freedom — even to become pharaoh, like Hatshepsut.

Everyone knows all about Cleopatra, the clever seductress of two powerful Roman men who ruled over Ancient Egypt.

But without her forebear Hatshepsut, there might never have been a Cleopatra. Surely Cleopatra looked upon the woman who rose to the upper echelon of power as a true inspiration.

What made Hatshepsut’s success all the more remarkable was how unprecedented it was. Sadly, for the most part, feminism hasn’t progressed beyond the traditional patriarchy over the past few millennia. Case in point, the United States has yet to elect a woman as president.

In the ancient world, having a woman at the top of the political pyramid was practically unheard of. Patriarchal systems ruled the day, and royal wives, sisters, and daughters served as members of the king’s harem or as important priestesses in his temples, not as political leaders. Throughout the Mediterranean and northwest Asia, female leadership was perceived with suspicion, if not outright aversion.

–Kara Cooney, “The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt”

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LEARN 9 FASCINATING FACTS about Hatshepsut’s early life here.

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In terms of the ancient world, Hatshepset truly was a remarkable woman. As our guide Mamduh mused, “They should make a movie about her — maybe many movies.”

Thank Sobek for Jean-François Champollion! He was the first to find references to our remarkable pharaoh in the modern era.

“History records only one female ruler who successfully negotiated a systematic rise to power — without assassinations or coups — during a time of peace, who formally labeled herself with the highest position known in government, and who ruled for a significant stretch of time: Hatshepsut,” writes Kara Cooney in The Woman Who Would Be King.

During her prosperous reign, gold, cedar, ebony and other goods flowed through Egypt, and the temples, shrines and obelisks raised in her name were so impressive that later pharaohs endeavored to be buried nearby, creating the Valley of the Kings.

Incidentally, we have French archaeologist Jean-François Champollion to thank for rediscovering the first hints of Hatshepset’s existence in 1928 — apparently, deciphering the Rosetta Stone wasn’t enough of a claim to fame. 

“Even Hatshepsut must have felt that her cross-dressing image was a bit too shocking for the time. ”

So how exactly did Hatshepsut move beyond being a queen regent to divine ruler? I do wonder how she viewed herself — could she be the first trans leader in history?

The loss of a nose makes this statue of Egypt’s first female king, Sobeknefru, a bit too creepy.

1. There was actually a female king of Egypt before Hatshepsut.

Just like Cleopatra, Hatshepsut had a role model from the past. Sobeknefru, daughter of Pharaoh Amenemhat III of the Twelfth Dynasty, ruled Egypt around 1800 BCE — about three centuries before Hatshepsut was born.

2. There wasn’t even a proper word for queen — so Sobeknefru blended masculine and feminine iconography.

The queens of Ancient Egypt were known as hemt neswt, or wife of the king — “a title with no implications of rule or power in its own right, only a description of a woman’s connection to the king as husband,” Cooney writes. To truly be seen as the ultimate ruler of the country, Sobeknefru had to take on the masculine title of “king.”

“Clothing was more problematic,” Cooney continues, “and Sobeknefru depicted herself wearing not only the masculine headdress of kingship but also the male royal kilt over the dress garments of a royal wife.”

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THE FIRST FEMALE KING OF EGYPT, Sobeknefru, was named for the crocodile god, Sobek.

Learn more about his worship from our post on the temple of Kom Ombo.

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3. A title shift on Hatshepsut’s monuments at Karnak might be the first clue of her massive ambitions.

A few years before she even became king, Hatshepsut dropped the title of God’s Wife, opting instead for the title of King’s Eldest Daughter. While the role of high priestess was one of the most powerful in Ancient Egypt, the adoption of this new title set the stage for a legitimate claim to the throne. 

“Some Egyptologists see this rejiggering of her personal relationships as the crux of her power grab, a shift that moved her from a queen’s role to an heir’s, as the rightful offspring of Thutmose I and one who could make a heritable claim to the throne despite her female gender,” Cooney writes.

4. Like Sobeknefru before her, Hatshepsut reinvented her image as a nonbinary gender. 

Another section at Karnak, the most massive temple complex of the day, in the royal city of Thebes, present-day Luxor, depicts Hatshepsut in men’s garments along with women’s.

The block “shows Hatshepsut wearing the gown of a queen on her body but the crown of a king upon her head,” Cooney writes. “The atef crown — a fabulous and extravagant amalgamation of ram’s horns and tall double plumes — was depicted atop her short masculine wig, probably to the shock of the craftsmen in charge of cutting the decoration. It was a confusing image for the Egyptian viewer to digest: a female king performing royal duties, offering jars of wine directly to the god, and all before any official coronation.”

5. She also took on a throne name, a privilege reserved for kings — again, before she was even crowned.

In the text on the same monument at Karnak, Hatshepsut called herself the One of the Sedge and of the Bee, which is translated as King of Upper and Lower Egypt.

What’s more, she introduced a throne name, Maatkare, The Soul of Re Is Truth. This act was “inconceivable,” according to Cooney. “Hatshepsut was transforming her role into a strange hybrid of rule ordained before it had officially happened,” she writes.

Part of her throne name is the goddess of truth and justice, “implying that at the heart of the sun god’s power was a feminine entity, Ma’at, the source that was believed to keep the cosmos straight and true,” Cooney writes, continuing, “Hatshepsut’s throne name communicated to her people that her kingship was undoubtedly feminine, and that feminine justice was necessary to maintain life with proper order, judgment, and continuance.”

6. About nine years into Thutmose III’s reign, Hatshepsut was crowned pharaoh — meaning there were two kings simultaneously on the throne.

When Hatshepsut was about 24 years old, in 1478 BCE, “the impossible happened,” as Cooney states. Thutmose III might have been a child, but he was still officially the king. Yet Hatshepsut, that wonderful feminist icon, decided to stop being the queen regent and that she would share the throne with her young nephew.

In this carving from her funerary temple, Hatshepsut is shown as a male, wearing the false beard and crown of the pharaoh.

7. Hatshepsut’s coronation was an elaborate affair that was, apparently, attended by the gods themselves.

The coronation took place in the temple complex of Karnak over the course of several days. If we’re to believe Hatshepsut, her dead-but-deified father, Thutmose I, was the first to place the crown upon her head. The cow-headed goddess Hathor was also present, shouting a greeting and giving her a big hug. And the chief god, Amen-Re (also spelled Amun-Ra), “personally placed the double crown upon Hatshepsut’s head and invested her with the crook and flail of kingship, saying that he created her specifically to rule over his holy lands, to rebuild his temples and to perform ritual activity for him,” Cooney writes.

What better way for Hatshepsut to be seen as a legitimate monarch than by having received the blessings of the gods? She really wanted to hammer home the supposed events of her coronation day — she had images of the gods crowning her chiseled into the major house of worship of the time, Karnak, as well as her funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari.

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SEE THE WONDROUS ARCHITECTURE of Hatshepsut’s funerary temple — and learn more about this surprisingly modern-looking structure.

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8. Upon being crowned, Hatshepsut changed her birth name — yet another instance of gender ambiguity.

Hatshepsut added Khenemetenamen to the front of her name, “which, although unpronounceable for most of us,” Cooney writes, “essentially meant ‘Hatshepsut, United with Amen,’ communicating that her spirit had mingled with the very mind of the god Amen through a divine communion.” 

Interestingly, she kept a feminine ending as part of the construction of that mouthful of a name. “There was no subterfuge about her femininity in her new royal names, but her womanly core was now linked with a masculine god through her kingship,” Cooney adds.

9. Hatshepsut’s royal names didn’t hide the fact that she was a woman. She was out to change the very perception of a king.

Egyptian kings liked to prove how macho they were, choosing names like Ka-ankht, Strong Bull. Hatshepsut’s Horus name was Useret-kau, Powerful of Ka Spirits, tying herself not to physical (and sexual) prowess, but to the mysterious might of the spirits of the dead. 

Like her new birth name, Hatshepsut used the feminine -t ending. “She and her priests knew her limitations as a woman and seemed interested in flexibility rather than deceit,” Cooney explains. “She became king in name and title, but she knew that she could not transform into a king’s masculine body. She couldn’t impregnate a harem of women with any divine seed. There was no need for 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.”

Only kings wore these long false beards — though only Amun knows why!

10. Hatshepsut immediately upgraded her existing iconography once she became pharaoh.

All of the images of her as queen under Thutmose III were altered to show her as the senior king of a co-regency. “No longer would she be depicted as subordinate to Thutmose III,” Cooney writes. “Every sacred space in Egypt was changed, especially in the cultic centers of power, where an image translated into reality and to write or depict something was to make it come into existence.”

11. The color of Hatshepsut’s skin in her statuary demonstrated her progression from female to male. 

Females in Ancient Egyptian art were shown with yellow skin, while males were red ochre. It’s thought that women were inside more often (weaving in the harem, one supposes) and didn’t get as tanned as the manly men out on military expeditions and the like. While Hatshepsut’s early statues stuck with the traditional yellow skin tone, later depictions, such as the ones showing her as Osiris, the god of rebirth at her funerary temple, are of an orange hue — a strangely androgynous colorization that must have baffled people at the time. By the end of her reign, Hatshepsut had adopted the red skin associated with males.

Statue after statue of Hatshepsut in a mummy pose like the god Osiris lines her funeral temple. The color has long since faded, but these carvings once had orange skin — in-between the yellow used for women and the red used for men.

12. In addition to skin color, Hatshepsut’s statues started taking on more and more male characteristics.

Early on, Hatshepsut’s genderbending positioned her as truly androgynous. On a lifesize statue from her funerary temple, she has a woman’s facial features, graceful shoulders and small, pert breasts — but she’s shirtless and wearing a king’s kilt. Even Hatshepsut must have felt that this cross-dressing image was a bit too shocking for the time. It was placed in the innermost chambers of her temple, away from the public, where only the most elite would ever see it. This drastic hybrid sexuality was never replicated.

Eventually, Hatshepsut’s statues had broader shoulders, and her breasts became the firm pecs of an idealized young man.

Because Hatshepsut presented herself as a male, Egyptologists can’t tell whether this is a statue of her or of her co-king, Thutmose III.

13. Hieroglyphic text went back and forth between referring to Hatshepsut as a female and as a male.

Sometimes she was “she;” sometimes she was “he.” On occasion, she was the Son of Ra, the sun god; more often she was referred to as the Daughter of Ra. Once in a while, she was called the “good god,” but most of the time — even accompanying a masculinized image of her — she was the “good goddess.”

14. Like many a pharaoh, Hatshepsut told a story of her divine birth.

The combo god Amun-Ra is said to have visited her mother in her bedchamber. “She awoke because of the fragrance of the god,” the text reads. I’m sure a bit more happened than this, but Hatshepsut chose to depict the moment as her mom and Amun-Ra sitting across from each other, hands touching, gazing sweetly into each other’s eyes.

This avant-garde woman rose to the highest political rank in a society over 3,000 years ago. So it shouldn’t surprise us to learn that after her death, her successor tried his very best to wipe all references to his aunt being king from the face of the planet. –Wally

Interview With an Archaeologist

A firsthand account of what it was like to excavate the Hatshepsut temple at Deir el-Bahari in the 1970s.

Kenneth shares his experience as an archaeologist in Luxor, Egypt in the early 1970s.

Archaeology is one of those careers that sounds so thrilling — I always picture Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones on his search for the Ark of the Covenant (minus the snakes). But it turns out that, more often than not, this profession means long hours, low pay, and months or years of tedious fieldwork.

That being said, when Kenneth reached out to us with a kind note about our blog, mentioning that he had been briefly involved with the excavation of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, we simply had to learn more. 

He obliged with an interview of what it was like to be an archaeologist in Egypt half a century ago, back when he was a starving field worker put up at the now-glamorous Winter Palace hotel, “in a shabby, Nile-view room with the bathroom far down the hall.” –Wally

The Colossi of Memnon stood as they do today, in a clearing surrounded by fields. But there were no barriers of any kind — you could climb the statues if agile enough.

What was it like being an archaeologist?

I was not a classical archaeologist for very long. (Not nearly as long as it took me to get my degree!) Turns out I liked to eat. And pay rent. Field work, which was really the reason I went into archaeology, pays next to nothing. There’s always a candidate working towards their doctorate who will offer to do the work for free. 

In 1969, I worked in Winchester, England (the Roman capital of Britain) under the well-respected British archaeologist Martin Biddle and Birthe, his Danish-born archaeologist wife. It was Martin who got me a temporary position the next season with the joint British-Polish expedition working at Deir el-Bahari. 

I was only at Luxor a few months before the Vietnam War intruded and I went off to the Navy. When I was discharged in 1973, the Arab-Israeli War was looming, and available funds for archaeological work in Egypt had completely dried up. I took what I thought would be a temporary job as a flight attendant, fell in love with the job and stayed 30 years. During that time, I met my husband, Michael (we celebrated our 35th anniversary last week), and the impracticality of going off on a months-long dig and leaving Michael at home put an end to any thoughts of returning to archaeology. 

The top colonnade on Hatshepsut’s funerary temple — which did not exist in 1970 — is complete in this 1989 photo.

What was the project you were working on? 

In 1970, restoration work was focusing on the third tier of Hatshepsut’s temple. The structure has been extensively rebuilt. Some Egyptologists would say overly rebuilt. 

There was an ongoing search for stone blocks that had been appropriated by later pharaohs to use for their own building projects. In Upper Egypt there are vast areas filled with thousands of broken stone blocks from fallen or dismantled  structures. Often, missing stones from a particular ancient monument can be discovered and moved (at great effort and expense) to their original site.

Kenneth’s husband, Michael, studying the statue of Horus at the temple at Edfu

Imagine you are working on a jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces are missing. In the next room someone has dumped into a huge pile thousands and thousands of pieces from hundreds of different jigsaw puzzles. In that pile you might find the missing pieces from your puzzle. The image on one of the pieces you are missing will be of a human arm. The left arm. And so as you sift through the huge pile of dumped puzzle pieces you are looking for one bearing the image of a left arm. 

Of course, in Ancient Egypt when a stone was reused, it often had carving on one side. The stone would be turned so the carving was no longer visible, and a new carving would be done on a blank side of the stone block. Five hundred years later, the block might be reused again, and so there would be a third side that would be carved…

So, going back to that pile of jigsaw pieces, as you are looking for that image of a left arm, you’re having to turn each puzzle piece because there are different images on each side of each piece.

Fifty years ago, it was a laborious task to try to find a particular stone in one of many locations up and down the Nile. (Now, computers do the work in seconds.) There were huge books full of illustrations of thousands of “available” stones. One needed to just keep looking. And if — by chance — a stone with the left arm was found, arrangements had to be made to legally acquire and move a multi-ton block of granite or sandstone. Reams of paperwork were required. It was what we’d call grunt work. And that’s mostly what I did. No glamour. No glint of gold in the sand. It was pouring over books and filling out paperwork. But it was Egypt, and I loved it. (At Winchester I was actually on my hands and knees, excavating a burial ground filled with Roman soldiers. I found coins minted under the reign of Hadrian and carved-bone dice for gambling, and because of the high peat content of the soil, well-preserved leather sandals as well. Skeleton after skeleton too — some of the bodies pathetically shattered in battle.) 

What’s your take on Hatshepsut? 

Well, of course she’s a fascinating person. The oldest known woman on the planet. She jumps out at us, her carved thoughts in many instances perfectly preserved because Thutmose III covered them with a layer of stone: “Now my heart turns this way and that, as I think what the people will say. Those who see my monuments in years to come, and who shall speak of what I have done.”

I think that Hatshepsut, like Cleopatra Vll, 13 centuries later (and Joan of Arc, 1,400 years after that), must have dazzled through the sheer force of her personality, to have accomplished what she did. Usurping her stepson’s throne might have made sense if the lad was unwell or unfit for the job. But he went on to be one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs! Was that despite Hatshepsut, or because of her?

Kenneth posing with Cleopatra and Caesarion on the rear wall of the temple complex at Dendera

When I worked in Egypt, there was only a slim hope that Hatshepsut’s body would ever be found. The fact that her architect (and supposed lover) Senemut’s red granite sarcophagus had been discovered broken into many pieces and spread across the desert seemed to indicate a royal temper tantrum that could very well have been Thutmose lll’s. Easy to imagine him hating the commoner whom Hatshepsut had showered with titles. I always thought that if Thutmose hated Senemut that much, he must have hated his ruling stepmother as well. The thought of ever finding her remains struck me as highly unlikely. I figured he eventually “grew a pair” and had her murdered and her body fed to the jackals.

But no! Now we know she was lying right under our noses in KV20 in the Valley of the Kings! And the proof that it was her right there in the Cairo Museum: one of Hatshepsut’s molars, packed in a small wooden box bearing her cartouche, and matching the gap in her mummified jaw. And we now know she grew old, and fat — with pendulous breasts. A life lived long!

So how and why was the throne eventually turned over to Thutmose? That is a mystery we may never unravel. I like to think Thutmose may have been a late bloomer. That his smart, capable stepmother watched over him and groomed him to become the great pharaoh he was.  

The timeless Old Cataract, which Kenneth and Michael say is “one of our favorite hotels anywhere in the world.” Wally and Duke agree!

What was your favorite memory of that time in Egypt? 

There were no tourists! War with Israel was looming. Luxor was virtually empty. Once, on a day off, I had Luxor Temple entirely to myself. Walking down a colonnade, between towering pillars, a falcon flew just over my head, sailing along ahead of me about 20 feet in the air. At the end of the colonnade, he rose up and landed on top of the head of an enormous statue — a statue of Horus. I just stood perfectly still, savoring the moment, and feeling I’d been visited by a god.

The floating restaurant Bodour, moored just upriver from the Winter Palace in Luxor, was one of their favorite places to dine, with its sumptuous Belle Epoque furnishings.

What was your least favorite memory of Egypt? 

The food. I grew up in health-conscious San Francisco. I was desperate for salads, which were not safe anywhere in Egypt because produce was routinely fertilized with human excrement. I gave in to temptation on a quick trip to Cairo and ordered a chef’s salad at the Nile Hilton, the hotel in the city. (It’s now the Ritz-Carlton.) I thought, “Surely it will be safe to eat a salad here.” Nope. I ended up at Cairo’s American Hospital for two days!

The rising sun turns the Theban mountains pink. As you can see, the West Bank was entirely agricultural. Luxor had yet to jump the river.

How has Egypt changed since the 1970s?

As far as the monuments are concerned, 50 years is a mere blink of the eye. The ancient stones are unchanged. What has changed is contemporary Egypt. In 1970 the view across the Nile from the Winter Palace was one of cultivated fields and the distant Theban mountains. That was it. (I could just make out the ramps at Deir el-Bahari from my room’s balcony.) There were hardly any visible West Bank buildings at all. The few villages, such as sand-colored Qurna, blended in with the cliffs. These days, the city of Luxor has jumped the river and spread along the West Bank.

9 Fascinating Facts About the Early Life of Hatshepsut

From her role as queen to Thutmose II, God’s Wife, God’s Hand and queen regent to Thutmose III, here’s how Hatshepsut started her legendary career.

Hatshepsut isn’t a household name, but she should be! This wildly successful woman rose through the ranks of power in Ancient Egypt

It’s a shame more people don’t know about Hatshepsut, one of the greatest rulers of Ancient Egypt. She was born around 1500 BCE, a princess destined to marry the next pharaoh.

“Hatshepsut has the misfortune to be antiquity’s female leader who did everything right,” quips Kara Cooney in The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt. 

“Every morning, Hatshepsut, as the God’s Hand, would rub the statue’s phallus until she felt it orgasm.”

Here are some fascinating facts I learned about this proto-feminist from Cooney’s book:

1. The role of the God’s Wife was one of the most powerful roles in Ancient Egypt.

As high priestess and “spouse” of the creator god Amun (aka Amen), Hatshepsut would have access to the most holy part of the Karnak Temple in Thebes (modern-day Luxor). Inside the sanctuary, where the god’s statue was kept, Hatshepsut would strip off her linen robe while the high priest offered milk (for Amun was reborn as an infant each day) and then bloody strips of meat as the deity grew in strength.

The chief god at the time, Amun, here seen merged with the one-armed, one-legged deity Min, needed to be given “a helping hand” every morning, and this was one of Hatshepsut’s duties

2. The high priestess was also the God’s Hand — meaning she had to jerk off the statue every morning. 

God’s Hand, indeed! Hatshepsut was responsible for the rebirth of Amun each dawn. “Reverently, she took his phallus into her palm, allowing him to re-create himself through his own release,” Cooney writes.

While the sacred instrument called the sistrum rattled, the God’s Hand would rub the statue’s phallus until she felt it orgasm.

The Nile flooding, as seen in this photo from the 1890s

3. If the God’s Hand didn’t give a daily handjob to Amun, Ancient Egyptians believed the world would end.

What exactly did they think would happen? “The Nile would cease to flood its banks every year,” Cooney writes, “leaving no life-giving silt and mud in which to farm. The sun would fail to rise in the east every morning, depriving the crops of life-giving rays.”

Amun was often depicted as having the head of a ram

4. Hatshepsut might have been as young as 9 when she played the role of sexual consort to the god Amun.

While that makes us cringe in the modern day, Ancient Egyptians didn’t shield their children from sex. 

“There were no religious strictures about the sinful nature of sex in the ancient world,” Cooney writes. “With no societal qualms about premarital sex or images of gods masturbating, and with many extended Egyptian families living in one-room homes with no protection of privacy, sex was simply more visible, even to a young child of the royal nursery.”

With the average person only living into their 30s, people started procreating once they hit puberty. “A short life expectancy meant that people grew up faster and started sexual activity younger than we would think appropriate or even ethical,” Cooney adds.

Thutmose II, Hatshepsut’s half-brother and husband, suffered from lesions, pustules and an enlarged heart

5. Hatshepsut married her younger brother, Thutmose II — incest was no big deal in Ancient Egypt. 

In fact, the first gods themselves were pairs of brothers and sisters who procreated down the generations to Osiris and his sister Isis, who gave birth to Horus, embodied by the pharaoh.

And so, at the age of 12 or 13, Hatshepsut became the King’s Great Wife to her half-brother. By keeping it all in the family, fathers avoided having to pay dowries, they could keep a dynasty tightly knit, and the royal family would be emulating the very gods themselves.

6. Thutmose II was a sickly young man.

In fact, the king was a complete mess: “If the identification of the mummy of Thutmose II is to be believed,” Cooney writes, “the boy was never in good health. His skin was covered with lesions and raised pustules. He had an enlarged heart, which meant he probably suffered with arrhythmias and shortness of breath.”

Thutmose III was only a toddler when he became pharaoh, so Hatshepsut reigned as his regent

7. When a pharaoh died but his successor was too young, the queen stepped in as regent to rule until the king came of age.

In this case, Thutmose III, who was born of a secondary wife, Isis, was only 2 years old when his father passed away, a toddler drooling and pooping his days away in the royal palace. And so Hatshepsut, widow of the previous pharaoh, stepped into the power vacuum.

It might seem strange to give so much power to a woman in an ancient kingdom — especially given that Hatshepsut would have only been 16 after her husband’s short reign. But, as Cooney points out, “It was a wise and safe practice, as even the most narcissistic mother was unlikely to betray her own son, cause his murder, or otherwise conspire against him.”

The role of queen regent was enacted often during the Eighteenth Dynasty: “Young kings were so common during this time period that, according to the calculations of one Egyptologist, women had ruled Egypt informally and unrecognized for almost half of the seventy years before the reign of Thutmose III, an astounding feat given Egypt’s patriarchal systems of power,” Cooney writes.

8. There’s a good chance that Hatshepsut had numerous lovers, though she never again married.

We know not only how open Ancient Egyptians were when it came to sex but also how tied up sex was with their religion. So it’s fair to assume that Hatshepsut could and probably did find her pleasure wherever she desired. 

“Given her position of power and her lack of a husband, she could have had relationships with any number of officials, young or old, male or female,” Cooney argues. “Why would we expect Hatshepsut to have embraced celibacy when she was the person to whom all looked for favor?”

A carving on an obelisk at Karnak shows Hatshepsut kneeling below the great god Amun

9. Within five years of her regency, Hatshepsut no longer held the position of God’s Wife.

We’re not sure why she gave up the position as high priestess (and lover of the great god Amun) or who succeeded her in the role — though it’s thought that she bequeathed it to her daughter, in the hopes that she would follow Hatshepsut’s ambitious career trajectory.

“Hatshepsut was in her early twenties,” Cooney says, “and strange as it may seem to us, she was probably too old to act as the sexual exciter of the god anymore.”

The loss of this powerful title could very well be what spurred the queen regent to grab more authority — and eventually become king. –Wally

The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

Visit Deir el-Bahari to explore the funerary temple of the powerful and successful female pharaoh.

The clean minimalism of Hatshepset’s funerary temple feels strangely modern, even though it was built 3,500 years ago!

Cleopatra might be more famous, but Hatshepsut, born a royal princess during the New Kingdom period of Ancient Egypt, was the first historically documented woman to rule the powerful empire with the complete authority traditionally only given to men.

While staying in Luxor, we hired a driver and guide through Egypt Sunset Tours, and as part of our West Bank tour, we visited the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.

“They should make a movie about Hatshepsut,” our guide Mamduh said to us as we drove to the temple complex. “Maybe many movies.” It was obvious he had great respect for her.

“To emphasize her authority, representations of Hatshepsut as a queen were replaced with gender-bending imagery depicting her in male pharaonic attire.”

Mamduh went on to elaborate that Hatshepsut’s reign was a period of peace and economic prosperity. He told us how her ambitious building projects set a precedent for future generations of pharaohs, but that her greatest architectural achievement was the tiered mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari. It was built in the mid-1400s BCE.

Admission to the site costs 100 Egyptian pounds (about $6).

More Than a Woman

Hatshepsut (Hat-shep-soot) was the eldest daughter of King Thutmose, and the wife of Pharaoh Thutmose II, her half-brother. Thutmose Jr. reigned only briefly, and upon his death, Hatshepsut became the queen-regent of her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, who, at the time, was considered too young to rule alone. However, in her seventh year as co-regent, Hatshepsut officially assumed the role of King of Upper and Lower Egypt and ruled for more than two decades.

Once Hatshepsut took the throne, she reinvented herself and even took a new royal name, Maatkare, meaning Truth Is the Soul of the Sun. To emphasize her sovereignty, she opted for a complete gender transformation, depicting herself with a royal nemes headdress, short ritual shendyt-kilt and traditional false beard on her chin. Although standardized, her visage retained a few subtle feminine features, including a fullness of the face, widely spaced almond-shaped eyes and benign smile — though her breasts disappeared.

Fit for a Queen

Hewn from limestone, the linear geometric volumes of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple have an understated elegance, appearing as if they’ve always been part of the rugged desert landscape. Staggered terraces jut out from the imposing rock cliffs and a central ramp ascends from the temple base to its uppermost apex.

Construction lasted over a decade, the site chosen for its location in the Theban Necropolis. This region was long considered sacred to the goddess Hathor, who, among her attributes protected the dead on their journey to the great beyond. The temple’s axis was positioned to align with Hatshepsut’s Temple of Amun, the eighth pylon at Karnak across the Nile on the East Bank. In addition, on the east side of the Valley of the Kings, directly behind the complex is KV20, the tomb Hatshepsut commissioned for herself and her father.

Mamduh walked with us up the processional path leading to the temple and explained that originally 100 or so sphinxes bearing images of Hatshepsut’s head lined both sides of the avenue. Wally and I had previously seen one at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

We paused in the forecourt, which once held exotic myrrh trees and other specimens brought from the ancient land of Punt. You can see the withered and desiccated stumps encircled by a low iron fence and sign.

Hatshepsut’s name meant Foremost of Noble Women, and as a young princess, she was appointed the religious title of God’s Wife of Amun, a high priestess who served as a mediator between the chief god and the pharaoh. She would later use this title as the underlying principle behind her sovereignty, claiming that she was acting as a divine instrument under the will of Amun and that the god himself was her father.

Only stubs of columns remain in the courtyard of the top terrace

Upper Court

Wally and I took the central ramp to uppermost terrace. Only a few of its columns still stand within the large open courtyard, and most of the Osiride statues of Hatshepsut (showing her depicted as the lord of the underworld) enclosed within its niches have been destroyed. The most sacred sanctuary, the holy of holies, is entered through a large granite gate in the center of the rear wall and was dedicated to the god Amun-Ra.

Wally stands in the granite portico leading to the sanctuary of the great god Amun

This terrace played an important role during the annual Beautiful Feast of the Valley festival, or Hab Nefer en Pa’Inet. A cult image of Amun-Ra was placed on a miniature ram-headed barque, or solar boat, and transported from the Temple at Karnak on the East Bank of the Nile to the temple of Medinet Habu, eventually coming to rest in the shrine here at Deir el-Bahri on the West Bank. Inside the sanctuary, the curved vaulted ceiling is decorated with celestial stars against a deep blue background. Niches, now empty, would have contained statues of Pharaoh Maatkare and most likely other members of the royal family.

We were amazed at the colors that have withstood the centuries, and particularly liked the star pattern on the ceiling

The majority of the excavation, reconstruction and restoration work has been carried out by the Polish-Egyptian Archaeological and Conservation Mission, located at the site behind a wooden door that, I believe, once led to the chapels of Hatshepsut and her late father.

What a woman! Hatshepsut styled herself with a lot of the symbolism only male pharaohs had used in the past — including a false beard

Middle Court

Among the impressive features of Hatshepsut’s temple are the colossal Osiride statues here. What makes these figures unique is that they are depicted grasping four symbols of royal authority and divine power, two in each hand: the ankh and flail in the right and the scepter and crook in the left.

Duke and Wally mimic the Osiride statues of Hatshepsut

A temple employee in front of some of the statues — note the reddish color on their faces

At either end of the middle court are two chapels. To the south of the colonnade is the Chapel of Hathor and to the north the Chapel of Anubis.

The chapel to the goddess of fertility sports Hathor columns, topped with her head

A procession of soldiers carrying shields and spears

In addition to her role as protector and travel companion to the dead, Hathor is the Egyptian goddess of sexual love, fertility, music, dancing and the sky. Inside, the now-roofless chapel includes a 12-columned hypostyle hall with four Hathor-headed capitals, resembling a super-sized sistrum, an Ancient Egyptian percussion instrument associated with the goddess, that rattles when shaken.

Colorful friezes in the Chapel of Anubis

The god of mummification is one of Wally’s faves. Jackals were often seen around cemeteries, leading Ancient Egyptians to believe that Anubis watched over the dead

After visiting the Hathor chapel, Wally and I wandered over to the Chapel of Anubis. What struck me most was the abundant amount of natural light illuminating its interior. Inside walls depict scenes of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification, and Osiris. There were also a couple images of Hatshepsut, which sadly have been chiseled away.

Most temples in Ancient Egypt feature one or more colonnades like this one

Lower Court

The lower court contains two important sets of reliefs. To the south was the Birth Colonnade, which Wally and I must have somehow missed. I read that a relief and inscription within depicts the myth of Hatshepsut’s immaculate conception — the god Amun, in the guise of her father Thutmose I, impregnated her mother, Queen Ahmose, with his divine breath. Given Jesus’ similar birth centuries later, this method of storytelling shouldn’t seem so strange to us. At the time, it certainly wasn’t unusual for pharaohs to claim dvine birth.

The Punt Colonnade contains bas-relief scenes documenting the royally sponsored trade expedition to Punt, which was undertaken to export exotic goods, including cinnamon, ebony, ivory, gold, incense and myrrh, for the cult of Amun-Ra (and the pharaoh herself, of course).

A beautiful carving of a lion, one of the exotic animals from the expedition to the mysterious land of Punt — no one is quite sure where exactly it was

Thutmose III, although not technically the king during Hatshepsut’s reign, was not sitting idle; he had been honing his military skills by leading the armies of Egypt on successful campaigns of conquest. However, it’s been speculated that after his step-mother (and aunt’s) death, he attempted to erase her legacy, ordering many of her images to be systematically chiseled off temples and monuments.

Additional damage to the temple occurred during the Amarna period, when images of Amun were removed by the so-called heretic King Akhenaten. Then, the ancient Copts reused the temple’s upper terrace and built a mud-brick monastery there, which gives us the name of Deir el-Bahari, Arabic for Monastery of the North.

Looking into the sanctuary of the Chapel of Hathor

Visiting these temples was a lifelong dream for Duke, who has been obsessed with Ancient Egypt since he was a kid

Wally preferred other temples to Hatshepsut’s, but it’s still worth a visit

Thanks to our knowledgeable guide Mamduh, Wally and I came away with a solid understanding of the amazing Hatshepsut and her mortuary temple before exploring it.

If you’d like to take a moment to recharge after — the Luxor sun can be brutal — there’s a café pavilion on the premises offering a spectacular view of the complex, along with ice cream treats. –Duke

The innovative terraced and columned Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut in what was once the city of Thebes