Maatkara Hatshepsut Henmetamon - Queen Hatshepsut - "Best in nobility" or "First of the venerable" - female pharaoh of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt from the XVIII dynasty.
Queen Hatshepsut was the daughter of the third pharaoh of the 18th dynasty Thutmose I and Queen Yahmes, the granddaughter of the founder of the New Kingdom, Pharaoh Ahmose I. During her father's lifetime, Hatshepsut became the "Spouse of God" - the high priestess of the Theban God Amun. Hatshepsut was the only female pharaoh in Egyptian history who managed to put on her head the double crown of Lower and Upper Egypt.
Hatshepsut received all the secular and religious honors appropriate to the pharaohs, she was portrayed, as it should be for a real pharaoh, with the attributes of Osiris, with a beard tied under her chin. After the death of her father, Thutmose I, she married the half-brother of Thutmose II. When he died at a fairly early age, his only heir was the young Thutmose III, the son of one of the pharaoh's younger wives. Hatshepsut ruled the state on his behalf for 22 years.
The Egyptian pharaohs were considered the earthly incarnation of the god Horus and could only be men. When the female pharaoh Hatshepsut ascended the throne, a legend was invented to legitimize her power, according to which the god Amon himself descended to earth in order to conceive his daughter in the guise of Thutmose I.
In the funeral temple of Queen Hatshepsut - Jeser-Jeseru or "Holy of Holies" in Deir el-Bahri, built by her favorite and court architect Senmut, hieroglyphic inscriptions have been preserved, which represent descriptions of events associated with the appearance of Hatshepsut, as well as ritual formulas … The translation of each inscription is preceded by a short description of the relief image to which it refers. On one of the reliefs, Amon informs the gods (Montu, Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Gebu, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Setu, Hathor) about the upcoming conception of a new "king" who will be given power in the country.
Amun's words to the gods:
Promotional video:
The reign of Hatshepsut marked the unprecedented prosperity and rise of Egypt. Of all the spheres of her state activity, Hatshepsut showed herself primarily as a pharaoh-builder. The queen restored many monuments destroyed by the Hyksos conquerors. Two obelisks of Hatshepsut with a height of about 30 meters next to the pylon of the temple of Amon-Ra in Karnak were the highest of all those built earlier in Egypt, until they were laid with masonry by Thutmose III (one of them has survived to this day).
Hatshepsut was actively involved in the construction of temples: in Karnak, the "Red Sanctuary" of Hatshepsut was erected for the ceremonial boat of the god Amun. Her name is associated with a sea expedition to the distant country of Punt, also known as Ta-Necher - "Land of God". The location of the country Punt has not been precisely determined, possibly the northern coast of Somalia, according to other sources - India.
The reign of Hatshepsut is a historical mystery, her name is not in the lists of the pharaohs of Egypt preserved on the slabs of Egyptian temples, the pharaohs ignored her in chronological chronicles, all the inscriptions about her in the Karnak Temple are fragmented. After the death of Queen Thutmose III, he ordered to rewrite all the official chronicles, the name of Hatshepsut was changed to the names of Thutmose III and his predecessors, all deeds and monuments of the queen were attributed to the successor of Hatshepsut. Thutmose III did not dare to destroy only two pink granite obelisks erected by Queen Hatshepsut in the Karnak Temple.
As Irina Darneva writes in the book "The Silence of the Sphinx", these obelisks resemble the Gates to Heaven, through which an invisible ray of distant worlds goes and pink granite gives them an unearthly state. The color pink was not chosen by the queen by chance, because pink pearls are considered a symbol of Venus and correspond to the dawn. "Light of the Morning Dawn" - this is how Venus was addressed in ancient times. An interesting fact is that the Mahatmas, the Great Teachers of mankind, called Helena Roerich the "Light of the Morning Dawn". In the correspondence with the Teachers, reflected in the diaries of Helena Roerich, there is a record that one of the incarnations of Helena Roerich is the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut.
Hatshepsut was considered the daughter of the Solar dynasty of the pharaohs, as well as an ordained priestess with a high spiritual position; the Priests of the Karnak Temple knew her destiny.
The greatest structures of the New Kingdom era were temples, or "houses" of the gods, as the ancient Egyptians called them. The waters of the Nile divided Ancient Egypt into the Kingdom of the Living and the Kingdom of the Dead. On the eastern bank of the Nile, palaces of the pharaohs and huge temples glorifying the gods were erected; on the western bank, pyramids, tombs and memorial temples were built in honor of the dead and deified pharaohs.
In Luxor, at the very foot of the Deir el-Bahri rocks, there is the most unusual monument of ancient Egyptian architecture - the memorial temple of Queen Hatshepsut, dedicated to the goddess Hathor. The temple stands at the foot of the steep cliffs of the Libyan plateau; it was erected in the middle of the second millennium BC next to the memorial temple of Pharaoh Mentuhotep I, the founder of the dynasty to which Hatshepsut belonged.
The construction of the funeral temple began during the life of Queen Hatshepsut. Dzheser-Dzheseru or "Holy of Holies" - that's how Hatshepsut called her memorial temple. On the border of the desert and the irrigated land, a giant pylon was erected, from which a processional road, about 37 meters wide, led to the temple itself, which was guarded on both sides by sphinxes made of sandstone and painted with bright colors. Right in front of the temple, a garden of outlandish trees and shrubs was laid out, brought from the mysterious country of Punt. Two sacred lakes were dug here.
The temple itself was truly an engineering marvel of the ancient Egyptians. Carved into limestone rocks, it consisted of three huge terraces, one above the other. On each of the terraces there was an open courtyard, covered rooms with columns and a sanctuary that went into the rocks. This grandiose plan was embodied by the hands of the architect Senenmut, the favorite of the queen and educator of her daughter Nefrura.
Around the name of Hatshepsut, various hypotheses are still being built, one of which claims that Hatshepsut is identical to the good Egyptian princess, who picked up a basket with the baby Moses from the Nile and raised him. According to another hypothesis of Immanuel Velikovsky, the Egyptian ruler is identified with the biblical Queen of Sheba, and the expedition to Punt - with the visit of King Solomon by the ambassadors of the Queen of Sheba.
The Bible says that Solomon began to build the Temple 480 years after the exodus of the sons of Israel from Egypt, built it for 7 years and finished it around 975 BC, possibly 1462 BC. - the date of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt. If Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness, then his flight from Egypt was around 1502 BC. And in 1503 BC. In Egypt, a female pharaoh, the famous Hatshepsut, came to power. How can these events be correlated? Perhaps Hatshepsut was the very “Pharaoh's daughter” who adopted Moses?
Legend has it that after 40 years in the wilderness, God told Moses: "Go, return to Egypt, for EVERYONE who were looking for your soul died". By that time, the loving Moses Hatshepsut and the hating Thutmose III had died. Almost three and a half thousand years have passed. The book of Daniel says: "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some for eternal life, others for eternal reproach and shame." Archaeologists managed to find a statue of Hatshepsut with an intact face. In 2008, it was officially announced that the mummy of Hatshepsut was buried in the Cairo Museum.
Thanks to modern technologies for DNA analysis, specialists managed to identify with absolute accuracy the remains of a mummy stored in the Cairo Museum and belonging to the ancient ruler of Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut, using a DNA sample taken from a tooth found in the tomb of Jeser Jeser. Versions of both the natural death and the violent death of the queen were put forward. However, the analysis of the Hatshepsut mummy showed that at the time of her death, she was about 50 years old and she died of diseases.
In Dzheser-Dzhesera, the Hatshepsut's wasp pilasters look down at modern tourists. The queen's lips were frozen in a half-smile, and the words inscribed on one of her obelisks are about to come off them:
Author: Valentina Zhitanskaya