Queen Hatshepsut or King Hatshepsut
Kimberly McNair
Leonard Lowe
Hum 111 World Cultures 1
November 4, 2012

The reign of Queen Hatshepsut was very controversial. She was a great ruler and had a reign of twenty years. There are several issues stating that she was not the “king”. Some people theorized she was only a regent or queen. Others believed she was king, but it was covered up by her successor and predecessor. There are many theories, but the truth is in the history.

Hatshepsut was one of the most unique rulers in Egyptian history. It was hard to tell exactly if she was king or queen. The deliberate destruction of her monuments and tomb were an attempt to cover up her reign as king. She was responsible for the temple of Deir el Bahri. This temple is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements of Egyptian architecture(Collier’s 688). Upon the perhaps untimely death of Hatshepsut, Thutmose III finally came into his own after almost 22years of frustration. He obliterated Hatshepsut’s names and figures on all her accessible monuments, destroyed or mutilated and buried her statues, and walled up her obelisks at Karnak, His destructive efforts were, however, executed so superficially that Hatshepsut’s remarkable personality and statue have suffered but little from his wrath and frenzy(Collier’s 688). There were several ideas but one stands out to me. The Tyldesley hypothesis was a great point. Joyce Tyldesley hypothesized that it is possible that Thutmose III, lacking sinister motivation, may have decided toward the end of his life, to relegate Hatshepsut to her expected place as the regent-which was the traditional role of powerful women in Egypt’s court as the example of Queen Ahhotep attests-rather than king. Tyldesley fashions her concept as, that by eliminating the more obvious traces of Hatshepsut’s monuments as pharaoh and reducing her status to that of his co-regent, Thutmose III could claim that the royal succession ran directly from Thutmose II to Thutmose III without any interference from his aunt(Tyldesley). This shows the deliberate attempts to erase her reign as king. There are facts all