AIA Lecture: The Woman Who Would be King by Dr. Kara Cooney

“The Woman Who Would be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt.”

Dr. Kara Cooney

Women in the Ancient World are viewed by many as having little to no power when compared to their male counterparts. However, Dr. Cooney’s lecture hoped to change this view by discussing one of the most successful women rulers of Ancient Egypt - Hatshepsut.

Dr. Cooney connected the ancient world with present day society by viewing how people feel about modern day female rulers, such as Hillary Clinton. She argued that many people feel the same way about female rulers today as they did in the Ancient World - that women and power are mutually exclusive. She continued this by saying that the only time women are brought into power are in times of crisis or if they have a family tie with a certain political position - Hatshepsut from Ancient Egypt is the perfect example of this.

Hatshepsut, was daughter of Thutmose I, wife of Thutmose II and aunt of Thutmose III which shows the strong family ties to the position of King of Egypt. She later became regent for Thutmose III due to Thutmose III being only a couple of years old when he became king - something which was seen a massive crisis by the Ancient Egyptian court. Cooney argued that Hatshepsut was chosen to step in as a ruler due to the traditional ties of femininity - she was seen as caring and as woman unlikely to kill Thutmose III to improve her own social standing.

Hatshepsut, in her own right, was an important woman in Egyptian society even before taking on the regency for Thutmose III, she was the God’s wife of Amen Re. This was a highly important within the religious structure of Egypt and therefore Conney argued she already had an ideological basis for power.

Cooney continued her lecture by going into details of how successful Hatshepsut’s reign was and how Egypt flourished under her. She maintained her power, not only by proving that she could rule, but by being extremely clever in the way she ruled. Cooney spoke about about she created jobs to gain support for her rule, she centralized the money and had control of her money. On a side note, Cooney spoke about her treasurer Senenmut, who she picked extremely carefully as he was only there to serve her and he had no previous ties to other Egyptian officials. An interesting point Cooney raised was how modern day scholars have seen the successful business partnership between Senenmut and Hatshepsut as not just business but as lovers. Cooney argued there is no evidence for this and noted how she doesn’t understand why scholars have ‘to go there.” This seems to be a modern approach to viewing women in power - women could not rule by themselves and there had to be a man behind her with the actual power.

Cooney showed images of the statues Hatshepsut commissioned throughout her reign. It was interesting to note that at the beginning of her reign there were very clear feminine elements however the latest statue Hatshepsut commissioned had lost all these feminine elements and was decidedly male in its appearance. Cooney argued that this statue was commissioned around the time Thutmose III became of age to become a king and by no coincidence this is the time Hatshepsut ‘became’ a man.

The lecture was extremely interesting and thought provoking as it definitely made you question the way we view ancient female leaders, as Dr. Cooney put it we only seem to remember the failures of female leaders in the ancient world, like Cleopatra, and we forgot about the women, like Hatshepsut, who ruled equally as successfully as their male

counterparts.