Hatshepsut And Thutmose 3Rd

Hatshepsut’s reign, just prior to that of Thutmose III, saw interactions not only with the Aegean but also with other areas of the ancient Near East.

She started the 18th Dynasty on its road to international contacts and global prestige, using diplomacy rather than war.

She was of royal blood, the daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose—though it should be noted that her father had achieved royal status only by marrying into the family.

Hatshepsut married her own half brother, Thutmose II, in an arrangement meant to help out the young man since he was only half-royal, for his mother was a minor royal wife rather than the actual queen. Being married to Hatshepsut gave him more legitimacy than he would otherwise have had.

Their union produced a daughter but no son, which could have been a disaster for the dynasty.

However, he did father a son with a harem girl, who was raised as Thutmose III, destined to follow his father on the throne.

Unfortunately, when Thutmose II died unexpectedly, the young son was not yet old enough to rule on his own. Hatshepsut, therefore, stepped in to rule temporarily as regent on his behalf. But when it came time to hand the throne over to him, she refused to do so. She ruled for more than twenty years, while Thutmose III waited—probably impatiently—in the background.33

During those two decades, Hatshepsut began to wear the traditional Pharaonic false beard and other accoutrements of office, and men’s clothing with body armor to conceal her breasts and other female attributes, as can be seen in statues created at Deir el-Bahari, her mortuary temple. She also changed her name, giving it a masculine rather than a feminine ending, and became “His Majesty, Hatshepsu.”34 In other words, she ruled as a man, a male pharaoh, not simply as regent.

As a result, she is now considered to be one of the most illustrious women from ancient Egypt, along with Nefertiti and Cleopatra. Hatshepsut apparently never remarried after Thutmose II died, but may have taken her architect and chief steward, Senenmut, as a lover; an image of him was carved, perhaps secretly, on Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari, whose construction he oversaw.

This intriguing ruler is associated with peaceful trading expeditions that she sent to Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) in search of wood, and to the Sinai in search of copper and turquoise,36 but the most famous delegation was one that she sent to the land of Punt during her ninth regnal year, the record of which is inscribed on the walls at Deir el-Bahari.

The exact location of Punt is now lost to scholars and is still a matter of dispute. Most authorities place it somewhere in the region of Sudan, Eritrea, or Ethiopia, but others look elsewhere, most usually along the shores of the Red Sea, including the area of modern-day Yemen.37

Hatshepsut’s expedition was not the first sent from Egypt to Punt, nor would it be the last. Several had been sent during the Middle Kingdom period, and later, during the mid-fourteenth century BC, Amenhotep III sent a delegation. However, it is only in Hatshepsut’s record that the queen of Punt—named “Eti” according to the accompanying inscription—is depicted. The illustration of the foreign queen has engendered much comment because of her short stature, curved spine, rolls of fat, and large posterior, usually resulting in modern descriptions of the queen as steatopygous (i.e., having a fleshy abdomen and massive—usually protruding—thighs and buttocks). There are also palm trees, exotic animals, and other details showing the distant locale, and depictions of the ships that transported the Egyptians to and from Punt, complete down to the masts and rigging.

In year 33 of his rule, sometime after 1450 BC, Thutmose III sent his own trade delegation to the land of Punt.

This is duly recorded in his Annals, as is another expedition to the same area, sent in Year 38.38 These are some of the few instances, along with the expeditions he sent to Lebanon to acquire cedar, where we can actually point to ongoing trade between Egypt and a foreign area during Thutmose III’s reign, though we suspect that much of the “tribute” (inw) depicted in the tomb scenes of the nobles from his reign is actually traded goods.

Among the far-flung areas with which Egypt under Thutmose III was apparently trading, and from which he recorded receiving inw on three separate occasions, was a region known to the Egyptians as Isy, most likely to be identified with the coalition of city-states in northwest Anatolia (modern Turkey) known as Assuwa, or with Alashiya, the name by which Cyprus was known during the Bronze Age. Thutmose’s scribes mention Isy at least four times in various inscriptions, including along-side Keftiu in his “Poetic Stele/Hymn of Victory”: “I have come to let You smite the West, Keftiu and Isy being in awe, and I let them see Your Majesty as a young bull, firm of heart, sharp of horns, whom one cannot approach.”39 In the Annals of his ninth campaign, in Year 34 (1445 BC), the “Chief of Isy” is said to have brought inw consisting of raw materials: pure copper, blocks of lead, lapis lazuli, an ivory tusk, and wood. Similarly, in the record for his thirteenth campaign, in Year 38 (1441 BC), we learn that the “Prince of Isy” brought inw consisting of copper and horses, and in the description of his fifteenth campaign, in Year 40 (1439 BC), we are told that the “Chief of Isy” brought inw consisting of forty bricks of copper, one brick of lead, and two tusks of ivory. Most were typical of items found in high-level gift exchanges across the Bronze Age Near East.40