Akhenaten: The Heretic Pharaoh

Akhenaten

Akhenaten, father of the famous Tutankhamen, husband of the beautiful Nefertiti, and son of the magnificent Amenhotep III of the 18^th dynasty, was a Pharaoh like no others. Born during the apex of Egyptian Golden Age as Amenhotep IV, Akhenaten was never expected to take the throne.  He had an elder brother who was his father’s favourite. With his brother’s untimely death, the then malformed “Amenhotep IV” could finally make a bid to change the Egyptian world.

The Aten

Before the time of Amenhotel IV, the Egyptians worshipped the Sun God Amun as the supreme deity whose main temple was at Karnak, as well as a myriad of traditional gods and goddesses. Due to the supreme position of their god, the priests of Amun at Karnak posed a very powerful group exercising enormous influence over the society and in the royal court itself. However, little did they know that all these would utterly be changed with the ascension of Amenhotep IV to the throne. Indeed, about five years into his reign, the Pharaoh and his queen, Nefertiti, began to turn their interest toward their new kind of Sun God, Aten, which represented the visible sun. To demonstrate their piety and strong conviction in his new Sun God, Amenhotep IV changed his own name to Akhenaten (Beneficial to the Aten). Within the Karnak temple complex, a new temple was added. This new temple, in contrast to Amun’s dark and mystical chamber, lay exposed to the sun. Yet, all this was still not enough for Akhenaten, who went further as to declare that his god Aten was the only true god. The first monotheism in history was thus born. To the discontentment and protest from the priests of Amun, Akhenaten decided that his true god could not exist alongside other “false gods”, and proceeded to have their names erased on a wide scale and divert funding away from the traditional temples, although his religious policy remained largely tolerant.   

Akhenaten and his family
worshiping the Aten

Akhenaten’s revolutionary scheme which altered the landscape of Egyptian religion and social fabric earned him the name “the Heretic Pharaoh”. In a bid to further entrench his religious scheme, Akhenaten moved his entire court to a desolate location in the middle of Egypt, near the modern city of Tel Amarna, where no towns or temples to other deities existed to interfere with Akhenaten’s building programme. There the Pharaoh built the new capital city from scratch, Akhetaten (the Horizon of Aten), complete with government buildings, temples and palace.

Temple of Aten at Akhetaten

Why did Akhenaten carry out such a revolutionary reform? After all, the traditional religion has existed for more than 2,000 years since the Old Kingdom. Did Akhenaten like breaking away from the past and leaving his footprints for posterity? Certainly his reform did not fare well against the overwhelming wave of conservatism. Although Aten was exclusively worshipped in Akhetaten, Egyptians elsewhere continued to worship the traditional deities. Most were forced underground after Akhenaten obliterated the names of their deities and closed their temples. Priests to the traditional gods were unhappy when they suddenly found themselves unemployed. Armies were idle as Egypt’s vassal states rebelled while the Heretic Pharaoh preached his message of love and peace. The message could not have been clearer. Akhetaten’s reform was doomed to failure, and after Akhenaten’s death in the seventeenth year of his reign, his religious reform died with him.        

Hatshepsut: The Story of a Female Pharaoh (Part 2)

Hatshepsut Sphinx from Deir el-Bahri

A stunning feat of Hatshepsut is no doubt her ability to convince the people of Egypt to accept her rule. After all, she is a woman, albeit one of pure royal blood. Even more surprising is the fact that her stepson and nephew, Tuthmosis III seemed to like this co-ruling arrangement. Busy as he always was with all the expeditions to the Near East from the Euphrates to Nubia that he was known as the “Napoleon of Egypt”. A great expansionist ruler, he is consistently regarded as one of the greatest of Egypt's warrior pharaohs who made Egypt an international superpower whose empire stretched from southern Syria through to Canaan and Nubia. Indeed, when not engaged in fighting he was always busy with his military training.

Hatshepsut's Obelisk at Karnak

And thus, Tuthmosis III was more than happy to let Hatshepsut take over in all the administrative affairs of Egypt and to defer to her in almost all matters of a domestic nature. When Tuthmosis III was on a campaign, Hatshepsut would be the undisputed ruler at home. In managing all the country’s administrative affairs, Hatshepsut was assisted by Senmut, her chief architect and official. In fact, it was theorised that Senmut was Hatshepsut's lover. Indeed, throughout his life, Senmut was never married, which was not the norm for an ordinary ancient Egyptian man.  

One of Hatshepsut’s chief architectural projects was the construction of a pair of obelisks at the entrance to the temple of Karnak. The obelisks’ thirty-metre-high tips were covered in gold and were the tallest in the world at the time. The obelisks were carved from pink granite from the distant quarries at Aswan, but exactly how they were transported hundreds of miles and then erected remains a mystery. The most likely mode of transport was most likely by boat up the Nile River. Hatshepsut also built Karnak’s Chapelle Rouge (“Red Chapel”) intended as a barque shrine whose red quartzite wall scenes depict the rites of kingship and feature her centre stage, accompanied by Tuthmosis II and Neferura, conducting her duties as God’s Wife before the statues of Amen, Mut and their fellow gods. The overseer of the project was none other than Senmut himself.    

Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple at Deir el-Bahri

Like many Pharaohs before her, the masterpiece of her Hatshepsut’s building projects was a mortuary temple built in a complex at Deir el-Bahri. It was designed by Senmut at a site on the West Bank of the Nile River opposite the city of Luxor near the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. The focal point of the Deir el-Bahari complex is the Djeser-Djeseru meaning "the Holy of Holies". It is a colonnaded structure of perfect harmony which sits atop a series of terraces reached by long ramps that once were graced with gardens. The complex is considered one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world, whose design is thought to be derived from the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II built nearly 500 years earlier at Deir-el-Bahri next to her mortuary temple. Unfortunately, most of the statue ornaments once standing in the complex are now missing - the statues of Osiris in front of the pillars of the upper colonnade, the sphinx avenues in front of the court, and the standing, sitting, and kneeling figures of Hatshepsut; these were destroyed in a posthumous condemnation of the pharaoh.

The sexual graffiti

It is at this mortuary temple complex that another clue as to the relationship between Hatshepsut and Senmut was discovered. Behind one of the main doors in Djeser-Djeseru the name and image of Senmut were found. There was also a piece of graffiti in an unfinished tomb used as a rest house by the workers of Djeser-Djeseru depicting a male and a hermaphrodite in pharaonic regalia engaging in an explicit sexual act. The hermaphrodite figure was widely believed to represent none other than Hatshepsut. Senmut also had a chapel and a tomb constructed for him near Hatshepsut's mortuary temple. They were both heavily vandalized during the reign of Thutmose III. Neither tomb was complete nor was it known where Senmut was buried. Nonetheless, the presence of the tomb near Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple indicates that both wanted to remain close to one another even in the afterlife. 

Hatshepsut's Statues at Deir el-Bahri

After Hatshepsut’s death, Tuthmosis III became sole Pharoah. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until the end of his reign when suddenly an attempt was made to remove Hatshepsut from certain historical and pharaonic records.  Her cartouches and images were hacked off some stone walls, leaving very obvious gaps in the artwork.  At the Deir el-Bahari temple, Hatshepsut's statues were torn down, smashed or disfigured before being buried in a pit. At Karnak, there even was an attempt to wall up her obelisks. While it is clear that much of this eradication occurred only during the end of Tuthmosis III's reign, the reason was not at all obvious. However, it was commonly believed that such obliteration of Hatshepsut’s memory was not carried out purely out of sheer spite or malice. Surely if the determined and strong Tuthmosis III wanted to avenge himself on his stepmother for taking over the affairs of Egypt, he would not have waited until her death and another two decades to seize the opportunity or stage a coup (he was the head of the army after all!). On the contrary, it was believed to be necessary to maintain the natural balance of order where only male were expected to rule, or simply for Tuthmosis III’ self-promotion.  In any case, the eradication was only sporadic and no evidence of Tuthmosis III’s intention to carry out a full-scale obliteration was ever found.

Tomb of Senmut

Hatshepsut’s legacy was by no means ordinary. In comparison with other female pharaohs, Hatshepsut's reign was much longer, more prosperous, and saw a long period of peace. She reestablished lost trade routes and brought great wealth to Egypt, which enabled magnificent building projects to be completed and in effect significantly raised the standard of Egyptian architecture that would be surpassed by no other civilisations for another thousand years. 

Hatshepsut: The Story of a Female Pharaoh (Part 1)

Hatshepsut

Let’s fast forward 1000 years to the New Kingdom’s 18th Dynasty to meet with our new extraordinary and fascinating Pharaoh, Hatshepsut. Why is he…sorry she so fascinating? Precisely because now after a long period of male rule, a “she” now appears in the historical record not as just “anybody” but as a Pharaoh!

Hatshepsut is the daughter of the Pharaoh Tuthmosis I and sister to Pharaoh Tuthmosis II.  Unlike Tuthmosis II who was born to a minor wife Mutnofret, she was the daughter of the principle wife Ahmose, whose title “God’s Wife” she inherited. Following tradition, Tuthmosis II and Hatshepsut married and had a daughter, Neferura, although Tuthmosis II also fathered a son, Tuthmosis III, by a minor wife, Iset. After a brief reign, the frail Tuthmosis II died. His son Tuthmosis III was still an infant, so what Hatshepsut was supposed to do? She became regent…no even better…she went one step further and had herself established as Pharaoh two years into her regency!

Tuthmosis III

So began the reign of a wicked and ambitious stepmother? There are a number of conflicting sources. Suffice to say that all the conventions of the court were all warped and distorted to suit the rule of a woman. She would proceed to appropriate all of the paraphernalia of a Pharaoh. That one insignia of a Pharaoh is a beard posed no problem at all to Hatshepsut, who had no qualm dressing up as a man, flaunting a royal titulary and adopting her ultimate public guise. She is portrayed in statues and wall carving with a delicate oval face with an incongruously false royal goatee. It is clear that henceforth she was to be shown as a male king, but nonetheless be consistently referred to by feminine pronouns, her male garb not being intended to fool the citizens into believing she was actually male (her gender would have been obvious in any event from her name!).

So what gave Hatshepsut the courage to establish herself as Pharaoh? After all she was not the king's mother, only his stepmother. Nonetheless, she was the daughter, sister and wife of a king and a God’s Wife like her grandmother Ahmose-Nefertari. This no doubt would have given her quite an edge. Holding full royal titles, Hatshepsut was “King of Upper and Lower Egypt”, “Maatkare”, “Daughter of Ra”, “Khnemet-Amen”, “the Horus”, “Weseretkau”, “She of the Two Ladies”, “Wadjrenput”, “the Golden Horus”, “Netjeretkhau”. Once crowned, she remained Pharaoh even when Tuthmosis III came of age and they became co-rulers.   

Neferura on Senmut's lap

During co-regency, while Tuthmosis III led two campaigns through Palestine and became an accomplished warrior, Hatshepsut too sent at least military expedition into Syria-Palestine and south to Nubia. Contrary to the claim that her reign was barren of any military achievement, there were in fact at least four campaigns where enemies were slaughtered and she became known as “She who will be a Conqueror, flaming against her enemies”.  

As Pharaoh, Hatshepsut handed the hereditary position of God’s Wife priestess to her daughter Neferura, who was educated and raised by Senmut. He would become Neferura’s chief steward who accompanied her to the Hathor temple of Sinai, where Hatshepsut sent expeditions. Hatshepsut also regularly traded with Byblos, exchanging their cedars for papyrus, while the alliance with Crete ensured a steady flow of Minoan goods into the Nile Valley. The painting of long-haired Cretans in their colourful kilts bringing Minoan perfume vessels decorated with painting of sea shells, seaweed and octopuses was even portrayed in Senmut’s tomb at his hometown Armant. Unfortunately, the fate of this prosperous neighbour of Egypt was unexpectedly cut short following a great volcanic eruption on Thera. The resulting tsunami wreaked havoc on Crete’s harbours and around the eastern Mediterranean coastline of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. This was confirmed by the analysis of pumice gathered in the Delta in the 18^th Dynasty levels which revealed that it came from Thera. The cloud of black ash from the eruption covered so much of the ancient world that the Egyptian texts claim that “for nine days none could see the face of their fellow”.

The Land of Punt

Another destination for Hatshepsut’s expeditions was Punt, “God’s Land”, located south down the Red Sea (roughly modern Somalia). It was here that Hatshepsut traded every decent thing from her court in exchange for myrrh, both its resin and the resin-producing shrubs. Allegedly, at Amen’s command she ordered the shrubs to be placed in pots and transported on the Egyptian ships. Not merely as a form of ritual protection, myrrh’s protection qualities were real as it could destroy bacteria and be used as medication in medical papyri of the time.

Read on in our next blog to discover more of Hatshepsut’s achievement as a Pharaoh….