FOUR

Regent for a Baby King

The surviving sons of Aakheperenre Thutmose could not have been more than toddlers at the time of his death. While it is true that many earlier kings had been children when they took the throne, they were old enough to ensure that their mothers needed to act for only five or six years as de facto ruler before the boy was able to lead in his own right. The crowning of a baby would require a rare decade and a half of rule by a regent. It was a tenuous situation.

Hatshepsut likely did not care which one of Thutmose II’s princes was chosen, given that all of them would have been no more than two years old and none had a mother of any standing. Her chief agenda at this most vulnerable moment was to somehow extend her dead husband’s line of succession, not only to ensure her own authority but, more important, to continue the Thutmoside line of her father. All she wanted was the selection of a healthy child, given the years of anxiety she had ostensibly spent with a sickly ruler.

We don’t know much about how a successor to the king was chosen in ancient Egypt, probably because it served the leadership to keep the process shrouded and exclusive. A general tenet of Egyptian society was that a man in office would be succeeded by his eldest son: it seems extremely likely that this should apply to the king as well, but the fact that a king apparently had the opportunity to formally nominate his heir (something Hatshepsut later tells us had been done for her) suggests that some level of choice among children of equal standing might be possible. A king might also reinforce his heir by naming the son Great General of the Army, a de facto way of naming him crown prince. But, if the candidates were all too young and untried for such a decision to be made, and if the king died without having chosen an heir, then such a momentous decision was made by others. The question is: who made the selection?

 A later autobiographical text of Thutmose III hints that there were a number of princes of Thutmose II to contend for the throne. Of course, the babies themselves were not competing; rather, each would have represented a particular faction of elites and officials who had a connection to the child through the mother’s line. But in this case, none of the women who bore Thutmose II’s sons seem to have been of any importance at all, so perhaps the political fight over their children was limited. Maybe the choice of a particular prince was immaterial, which meant that the real danger—from Hatshepsut’s perspective, at least—came from groups of elites who were willing to ignore a living heir with an unconnected mother and instead push forward their own adult contenders for the throne, perhaps a man with links to the family of Amenhotep I. Although we have little evidence of such maneuvering, there must have been many far-seeing, logical men in Hatshepsut’s court and throughout Egypt who were reluctant to submit themselves to the reign of a toddler, himself descended from a weak king.

If we assume that Hatshepsut was interested and involved in the decision about who would succeed her dead husband, we can imagine that she would again rely on her most trusted source of power: her connection to the gods and the inviolability of divine decision. Hatshepsut likely understood that Amen-Re had to be the one to select the prince who would rule and that such a revelation must take place in front of many eyes. If she tried to shield the selection, people might suspect that she was interfering with it. But if she opened up the succession decision for all courtiers to see within a religious oracle, she could recast a thorny political issue as the indisputable will of the god, thus enabling her to place one of the Thutmoside babies on the throne of his father and save her dynasty.

The oracle text that provides us with the basis of reconstructing what happened next is problematic because it deals with the supernatural mechanisms of divine authority. It states that Thutmose II’s princes found themselves in a pillared hall of the temple, presumably brought there for this purpose, and each of them was “still a baby bird in its nest.” The god appeared, his rays somehow shining into the eyes of the princes as he took on the manifestation of Horus on the horizon. Perhaps the rising sun had just slanted into the hall, moving over the floor where the princes sat and blinding them momentarily. The people present in the hypostyle hall were awestruck by the divinity before them. Next, a figure called “his majesty” appears in the written story. The identity of this figure is unclear, but presumably it refers to the king, the designation remaining vague and unnamed as happens so often in Egyptian histories of mystical experiences. Perhaps the majesty in question is meant to be Thutmose II, living or dead, but whoever he was he burned incense and made a great offering of sacrificed animals, including a bull and a calf to the god of the temple. It was at this moment that the god of the oracle makes his appearance, presumably Amen in his barque. The god is said to cross the two sides of the pillared hall, apparently an unexpected move, but part of the god’s revelation. He was searching for the king who would serve him next. Suddenly, the god looked upon his choice, one of the princes before him. The prince in question threw himself to the ground on his belly and bent his arms up toward the god in veneration, dexterous movements for a toddler. Then the god, somehow, placed his chosen prince in front of “his majesty,” presumably the mysterious unnamed king, and made the boy take the place of honor in the hall. Then and there, the god is said to have performed his revelation, ostensibly naming the boy as the next king before all those assembled.

We can envision the scene as it may have really happened: all the baby princes toddling around the temple, their nurses and mothers running after them, as the sacred shrine of the god, carried by a group of priests, entered the hall. For all we know, this could have been one of the next king’s first memories: seeing his father Amen for the first time in his golden shrine and being plucked from among his brothers to serve. Like Hatshepsut’s oracular histories, Thutmose’s oracle text forgoes specifics. The Egyptians obviously believed that such a sacred event was better seen obliquely.¹ The machinations behind such selections are almost irrelevant: to the ancient Egyptians, political will and religious revelation were completely intertwined at this point in history.

The chosen prince was a boy named Thutmose, son of Isis, one of his father’s lesser wives. He would become Menkheperre Thutmose, known to us as Thutmose III. Years later, Thutmose III would record this oracle in his annals. He left out many historical details, but he maintained fervently that the account was not a falsehood. To him, Amen’s oracular choice was a miraculous and real event—how the god circled around the temple hall, searching for him, until he finally singled out the young prince to be the next king. Thutmose III later memorialized this event in stone in the heart of Karnak Temple, implying that Amen’s revelation was ironclad and not to be doubted. Like Hatshepsut, he claimed that he was the god’s choice.

The new king’s mother had no special connections to either the Thutmoside or Ahmoside family. Hatshepsut considered Thutmose III to be one of her nephews, the son of her brother. But because Hatshepsut was also married to her brother, Thutmose III was a stepson to her as well. The god’s choice was meaningful for Hatshepsut. Not only had the dynasty of her father been allowed to continue, but the oracle made a political decision without any indication that Hatshepsut herself was involved. The oracle also avoided the intrigue and subterfuge that would have resulted if the choice had been left to her or her courtiers.

Thutmose III’s account does not include any mention of Hatshepsut, even though she must have been there at the god’s revelation, perhaps acting as the God’s Wife during the proceedings. It was her family dynasty that benefited most from the oracle, after all. It’s possible that she even carefully organized the events with the First High Priest of Amen to lock down the succession after her husband’s death. Despite the new king’s Thutmoside connections, this transitional period created a problematic balancing act for Hatshepsut, who would now have no direct and formal link to the next king as sister, daughter, or wife, but who still remained as the highest-ranked and, presumably, the most capable member of the royal Thutmoside family in the palace besides her mother. In many ways, Thutmose III ruled as king only because Hatshepsut was there to make it happen. He only took the throne because she had been able to keep all other contenders and threats to her dead husband’s child at bay. Had Hatshepsut not been there, it’s easy to see how the crown would have passed to an experienced man from a different family, thus establishing a new dynasty. The end result was such a believable spectacle that Thutmose III himself later recorded that it was a pure and miraculous choice.

 The selection process of Thutmose III was quickly (if not instantly) idealized and mythologized by the political players, but the practicalities of rule still needed a firm hand in the current delicate state of affairs. Thutmose III was a small child at best, more than a decade away from effective rule on his own; he would need a strong regent. His mother, Isis, was apparently an inappropriate choice; although we can assume that as a member of the harem she was beautiful and fertile, it is also probable that she was neither educated nor highborn. She was clearly trumped as candidate for regent by the dowager Great Wife Hatshepsut, who had already been serving as God’s Wife of Amen for almost a decade.² When the time came to choose the hand that would guide the young king, it was Hatshepsut who took her place as regent. This fact, in and of itself, says all we hope to know about Hatshepsut’s proven leadership abilities and the confidence that the priests, military, and bureaucracy had in her. They all seem to have welcomed the rule of this young queen.

In fact, an ancient biography of one important official named Ineni tells us quite clearly who took up the reins of power.

[He (that is Thutmose II)] went to heaven, and he joined with the gods. His son stood in his place as King of the Two Lands as he ruled upon the throne of the one who begat him. His (Thutmose II’s) sister, the God’s Wife, Hatshepsut, was doing the affairs of the Two Lands with her plans. One worked for her; Egypt was with bowed head.³

Hatshepsut was no longer the wife of the reigning king, but she was still God’s Wife of Amen, which was the true source of her power. She was quickly recognized as the actual ruler of Egypt by courtiers and officials, and in Ineni’s text the name of the living king—the toddler Thutmose III—is not even mentioned.⁴ For most elites serving in the many palaces, temples, and fortresses around Egypt, Thutmose III’s mere existence cemented the royal succession from father to son, but in practical terms it didn’t matter at all. In all likelihood, Hatshepsut had ruled before Thutmose II’s death. She still ruled. The status quo had been maintained.⁵

If Thutmose III had been older at his accession, we can imagine him marrying Hatshepsut’s daughter Nefrure at that time, allowing Hatshepsut to act as regent and mother-in-law, much as her mother, Ahmes, had done for Thutmose II. But marriage in Egypt was a procreative affair, and it would not do to marry two children, both no more than toddlers, as there could be no sexual union. Hatshepsut would have to devise a way to cement her power as a stepmother and an aunt, with no closer connection to her young king than that.

We have no evidence of any political rejection of this new young king by the Egyptian elite, but, again, we should not expect to see it in the official records. If an insurrection took place, Hatshepsut was able to quash it. And she wasn’t one to mince words: a later text commissioned by her states, “He who will praise her, he will live. He who will speak an evil thing, ignoring her majesty, he will die.”⁶ What we do witness, and what makes many historians suspect that there was political disagreement at this sensitive juncture, is a concerted and systematic attempt by Hatshepsut to compensate for what this young king lacked: experience and pedigree.

Thutmose III’s maternal origins were unimpressive; but his father was a king. As daughter of both a king and a Great Royal Wife, Hatshepsut had no such deficiencies. And with her priestly experience, she was able to step into the regency unimpeded. The office of queen-regent was ancient by the time Hatshepsut exercised it. Evidence for the practice of highborn, educated women ruling on behalf of their young male charges goes back to the Old Kingdom at least, almost one thousand years before, and the practice probably stems back even farther, to the Early Dynastic Period, another five hundred years before that. Many Eighteenth Dynasty kings had already come to the throne as boys in need of political guidance: Ahmose, Amenhotep I, Thutmose II, and now Thutmose III. Young kings were so common during this time period that, according to the calculations of one Egyptologist, women had ruled Egypt informally and unrecognized for almost half of the seventy years before the reign of Thutmose III, an astounding feat given Egypt’s patriarchal systems of power.⁷ Even so, Thutmose III seems the youngest of these kings by far, and everything depended on his coming of age and fathering male offspring. If a disease claimed him, if he was bitten by a snake, or if he took a tumble during chariot exercises, then the political maneuvering would begin again. Likely everyone was holding their breath during Thutmose III’s early childhood, hoping either that he would live to secure their futures or that he would die and give someone else a chance to take the throne.⁸

Some Egyptologists suspect that Hatshepsut was too young for the crucial governance demanded in this tricky situation.⁹ Although we think of adolescence as a time of teenage rebellion and irresponsibility, in the ancient world this age marked entry into adulthood, particularly for a female. Hatshepsut must have been quite a capable young woman, having already been thrust into many difficult situations and learned from strong role models of authority: her father, her mother, and probably even the dowager God’s Wives. If trained and educated properly, a teenager may have been perfectly suitable to act as regent of the richest land in the ancient world and to keep dozens of scheming courtiers at bay.

During this time, Thutmose III’s mother, Isis, seems to have been excluded from any exercise of authority. She had other responsibilities, anyway. The young king must have still needed his mother’s close attention and care, and she was probably busy running after her toddler like any other mother. Given her lack of royal connections and titles, even Isis, mother of the king, may have behaved with great subservience in the presence of Hatshepsut. Although likely close in age to Hatshepsut, she would have been keenly aware of her own lesser abilities in Hatshepsut’s company. No doubt the girl was intimidated by a woman trained in the mysteries and intellectual puzzles of Amen-Re’s rebirth.¹⁰

As Thutmose III grew up, he would have grasped this unfavorable contrast. His mother may have paled in comparison to the great woman who ruled Egypt on his behalf, Hatshepsut who could likely control a recalcitrant official with a glance, who had intimate knowledge of the Lord of All, and who had learned leadership from his grandfather, the great Thutmose I himself. As Hatshepsut grew older, her confidence and authority seem to have been unrivaled. Thutmose III would have learned at a young age that even though his mother was insignificant and his father sickly, Amen had favored them with seed and revelation, respectively. He would have learned that not all people were meant to be powerful, even if the god had chosen them to birth the monarch, or to even serve as king. And maybe he was concerned that his father’s unimpressive legacy might become his own.

Thutmose III never knew a time in his life when Hatshepsut was not in control of Egypt. To him, her rule was his constant reality. It is unlikely that he ever perceived her as an adversary, at least not during his childhood. She was doing him and Egypt a necessary service. But being the savior of the family dynasty may not have inspired her love for him. Or perhaps it did, so that Hatshepsut instructed and advised the young king as the son she never had, treating him as a mother would. No matter how she felt about him, at the beginning of his education, the young king was likely in awe of her intellectual abilities and political influence. She must have been unlike any other woman known to him.

 Thutmose III was not just a figurehead, despite his age. It was believed that his kingship was developing inside him as the years passed. We can imagine Hatshepsut gently but firmly guiding her charge, a young king with a crown that was too big, through sacred and essential rituals. As the God’s Wife, she occasionally acted on behalf of the king in the temple, but she would have still required his presence for many rituals. He had to learn his place in the world sooner rather than later, and she likely put him to the task of learning his ritual and political responsibilities as young as possible. Throughout it all, Thutmose III watched her interact with officials, priests, administrators, palace women, and palace children; she was his greatest role model for wielding true power.

Thutmose III’s bold actions in his later reign do not give the impression that he turned into a spoiled king given to excess or narcissism. Indeed, he seems to have become a controlled and shrewd man, one who knew his own mind and trusted in his own abilities. As a boy, he was likely not given much leniency, and much was expected from him. We can assume that Thutmose III did not get his own way all the time, even though he was king. Hatshepsut must have played a role in this disciplined upbringing.

In fact, if we step back and look at the situation into which this child was thrust, we can see that the burden placed on him at such a young age was extraordinary, on par with Hatshepsut’s own. Thutmose III assumed a position for which he was simultaneously training. One wonders when he recognized the profound weight of it all—that the universe’s continued creation, the rising and setting of the sun in an organized fashion, the proper flooding and receding of the Nile, the safety of his land, the continued presence of the gods in their temples all depended on him, the rituals that he enacted, on his communication with the gods. At some point in his youth, he became aware that this burden would lay upon his shoulders forever: he was a god, and upon his death he would rise to the heavens and join with the Imperishable Stars in the northern horizon. His heavenly burdens separated him from the people around him, shrouding him in loneliness, perhaps driving him toward activities that were anchored to the dirt and reality of this world.

Or maybe he never had such a moment of panicked clarity, because Hatshepsut was always there sharing his burden of rule and making sure his officials and priests were behaving, allowing Thutmose III to learn his craft as a ruler without the threat of betrayals or insolence toward a king who was too inexperienced to thwart them. Hatshepsut saw to it that he lived in a prosperous, expanding empire, with obedient vassals and secure sources of revenue. In many ways, Hatshepsut’s regency gave Thutmose III time to breathe, grow up, and foster his own skills. She was probably also the only other person in the palace who felt the depth and complexity of these responsibilities, the only other person in the entire world who could understand his anxieties.

Most of his education in kingship would have taken place at court, including a great deal of on-the-job training in the throne room or beyond Egypt’s borders in the land of the subjugated enemy. There was no need to make up arithmetic problems: just present the year’s tax revenue and ask him to allocate it. He didn’t have to be encouraged to learn his hieratic: he could read the dispatches from Nubia that had everyone so alarmed. The necessities of execution and punishment didn’t have to be explained to him in painstaking detail: he saw men impaled, staked, mutilated, or exposed firsthand, ostensibly on his orders.

Thutmose III also had formal instruction led by tutors who kept him on task. They taught him the many facets of the ancient and complicated Egyptian language. Although he likely learned no foreign languages, he was busy enough. He needed to master both hieroglyphic sacred inscriptions and hieratic cursive scripts. He learned the Middle and Old Egyptian of five hundred to one thousand years earlier. Even though no one spoke in such an archaic fashion anymore, these were the languages of the Pyramid Texts, the “Tale of Sinuhe,” and the “Instruction of Ptahhotep.” Mastering the oldest language forms would have been akin to learning the Greek of Plato for a Roman patrician or reading Beowulf at Oxford. He never really wrote the common vernacular that was spoken around him; even in letters, his language was formalized and archaic, befitting an immortal king who had ruled for millennia and who would continue to rule Egypt forever. He also studied ethics, as passed down through the instruction texts of his forefathers, as in “Ptahhotep,” and learned to be a wise judge:

If you are a man who leads, who controls the affairs of the many, seek out every beneficent deed that your conduct may be blameless. Great is justice, lasting in effect, unchallenged since the time of Osiris. One punishes the transgressor of laws, although the greedy one overlooks this.¹¹

And he learned about the divine responsibilities of kingship from the “Instruction for King Merikare”:

Work for god, and he will work for you also—with offerings that make the altar flourish, with carvings that proclaim your name. God thinks of him who works for him. Well tended is mankind—god’s cattle. He made sky and earth for their sake. He subdued the water monster. He made breath for their noses to live. They are his images who came from his body. He shines in the sky for their sake. He made for them plants and cattle, fowl and fish to feed them. He slew his foes, reduced his children when they thought of making rebellion. He makes daylight for their sake. He sails by to see them. He has built his shrine around them. When they weep he hears. He made for them rulers in the egg, leaders to raise the back of the weak. He made for them magic as weapons to ward off the blow of events, guarding them by day and by night. He has slain the traitors among them as a man beats his son for his brother’s sake, for god knows every name.¹²

He also exercised his body. Thutmose would have been trained in the art of battle—in the athletics of warfare and hunting, archery, charioteering, as well as dagger and scimitar handling. Unlike Hatshepsut, Thutmose III was expected to spend time out of doors, where he wore nothing but a short kilt and allowed his skin to bronze to a dark brown, hunting game in the desert, hippos in the marshes, or fish along the river.

And, of course, he spent countless hours in the temple, memorizing the secret names of gods that were only revealed to the initiated, absorbing never-ending temple liturgies, and digesting theological treatises, as he worked toward the performance of vital and imperative rituals. He probably started this process as young as three or four years old. As he got older, Thutmose III likely began to ask his priestly instructors questions that led to vibrant theological discourse about the nature of gods and the universe, divinity’s connection to this world, and the king’s place in it. For this boy, temple mysteries became normal and familiar. The grand temples of Egypt, birthplaces of the gods and machines of the universe, were where Thutmose III played, literally, while lengthy festivals and rites were taking place; kind priests might have crafted toys for their young king or encouraged him to find secret passages in the pylons and the crypts. In many ways, he probably felt that the gods’ abode—with its stillness, cool stone walls, inlaid gates, gilded columns, the sounds of chanting, the smell of incense, the cries of the calves, and the acrid tang of sacrificial blood—was his own beloved home as well.

We do not know how old he was at the time of his official religious initiation to the temple mysteries, but given his position as king, he was probably quite young. According to Thutmose III himself, it occurred just after his selection as king by the oracle. This is clearly an exaggeration—he was only a toddler at the time of his coronation—but the same text in which Thutmose III recollects how Amen chose him to be king tells us that after this ceremony he flew up to heaven as a divine falcon, using the body of his incarnation, Horus upon earth, to come into contact with the divine world. When he arrived in the celestial realm, the gates of heaven were thrown open for him, allowing him to cross the sky. There, he expressed his love for the gods, whose mysterious forms he contemplated. He saw the manifestation of the sun god on his descent in the west and on his rising in the east, and in between the two, in the land of the dead. He was able to understand the true nature of the universe. And then he returned to Egypt to inhabit his earthly body again, to rule Egypt as a divine Horus.¹³

This is heady stuff, at any age. From his first memories, Thutmose III knew that he was exceptional, able to commune with the gods in an intimacy and with an intricacy to which few others had access. The only other person who seemed to share those same abilities and duties was his stepmother, his aunt, his regent, the God’s Wife of Amen, Hatshepsut.

 During the early part of her career as regent, Hatshepsut wore the long linen gown of a queen and priestess; her head was covered by a vulture headdress and her forehead decorated with a cobra. Her mother, Ahmes, may still have been alive at this time, although we have little record of her. In many ways, Hatshepsut had simply taken over where her mother had left off, acting as regent for the new male king and relying on memories of her own mother’s regency as her best model for rule.

Yet Hatshepsut surpassed her mother and built a career not solely connected to a man’s power—because she also maintained her role as Egypt’s highest priestess. Hatshepsut continued her temple duties as God’s Wife of Amen during this time, and she quickly began to lay the groundwork for the future care and satisfaction of her god under this new king. Hatshepsut probably trained her daughter Nefrure for the God’s Wife of Amen position personally and attentively. The young girl likely shadowed her mother in the temple during the daily meals and all festival processions, learning the rituals at a young age just as Hatshepsut had done before her. Nefrure was in training alongside Thutmose III—two small children inhabiting roles much bigger than they could comprehend.

During this vulnerable and liminal time, Hatshepsut was the only one who could build the pillars of Thutmose III’s new kingship, and she began a campaign of temple renewal throughout Egypt and Nubia. One scene, commissioned by her at Semna temple in Nubia, shows her with Thutmose III carved as a man, not a boy. Hatshepsut chose to show herself wearing a long gown and to name herself God’s Wife of Amen and King’s Wife. Texts tell us that Thutmose III and Hatshepsut rescued this temple from ruin. Even though Thutmose III was the king in body, it was Hatshepsut who enacted a systematic program of monumental building to ensure that her rule was depicted alongside his throughout the land and that her image as a woman of authority was carved in Egypt’s sacred temples.¹⁴ Her mother, Ahmes, had done the same for herself and Hatshepsut during the reign of Thutmose II. But now Hatshepsut went even further, claiming more space for herself in the temples she built for her young charge. Such depictions of a God’s Wife were unprecedented, just like her powerful regency.

As she strengthened Thutmose III’s kingship with new buildings, she also erected sacred monuments in the name of her dead husband, perhaps reminding her people why she, and not another, served as regent. In the temple of Khnum, the god who the Egyptians believed created the world on his potter’s wheel, located on Elephantine Island in Egypt’s south, just above Nubia, Hatshepsut set up a statue of Thutmose II, with the inscription “for her brother,” thus making the pious addition as much about her as about the dead monarch.¹⁵ She also began a series of stone monuments at Karnak, now only preserved as blocks, on which the dead Thutmose II filled a prominent role. Hatshepsut seems to have been playing up her connection to Thutmose II in these monuments, perhaps with the realization that her connection to his son Thutmose III—as his aunt—was only tenuous and by no means direct. It is as if she was manipulating the monuments to rewrite history: perhaps she thought that if she focused on her relationship with the father, everyone might begin to see the son as hers, too.

Indeed, her own individual legitimacy—as regent, as priestess, as queen—was now at stake as she faced a political-religious issue of palace-temple protocol. The position of God’s Wife of Amen was powerful, to be sure, but the holder of this office was meant to be closely and directly related to the current king, preferably as King’s Daughter or King’s Sister or King’s Wife. Hatshepsut had been all of those, but only in relation to Thutmose I or II. Now, her connection as God’s Wife—as the current king’s aunt and stepmother—was questionable. The lineage of the priestess office needed to follow the living king; it could not move down a peripheral female line. Indeed, Hatshepsut probably hoped to finish training and appoint her daughter to the post as soon as possible. Nefrure was Thutmose III’s half sister and without a doubt destined to be King’s Wife at some point, if she lived to see that day. But like Thutmose III, Nefrure was only a small child. Hatshepsut played a waiting game, filling the role of Egypt’s two most important positions simultaneously—effective king (as regent) and God’s Wife—while both young officeholders grew up. Some decorated blocks from Karnak suggest Nefrure’s transition to the office happened quite early, perhaps around her fifth or sixth year. The reliefs show Nefrure identified as God’s Wife and also pictured as a grown woman, even though she must have been just a little girl, standing behind her mother dressed as a queen.¹⁶

Hatshepsut’s life thus far was full of rich and varied experiences, as necessity led her from one vital role to another. During the first five years of Thutmose III’s rule, as Hatshepsut edged closer to her twenties, she was a priestess and a politician, a mother and a widow, a dowager queen and de facto ruler of Egypt, all the while constantly scrambling to find a formally defined place in the world. She engaged in temple rituals, the training of her daughter, meetings with high priests from temples throughout Egypt, discussions with her officials—viziers, treasurers, stewards, and overseers of public works and temple construction—and gatherings with her military wing.

Her husband had been her half brother, probably her junior, and sickly to boot. Regardless of whether theirs had been a passionate love affair or if she felt him her true overlord, he was dead now. One might assume that this fact was liberating for her. Never again would there be a man to whom she was supposed to report or to whom she was meant to be subservient. There was nothing left for Hatshepsut now but to rule at the highest level. Every piece of evidence about her future actions suggests that she knew this.

But she was still a young woman, with desires and normal human tendencies, in a land where sexuality was not controlled by the same religious strictures as in much of the modern world, where royal births still needed to be managed and authenticated, but where one highborn widow’s sexuality was probably not monitored or judged in the way we might expect. Sexuality was an integral part of the human experience in ancient Egypt, and Hatshepsut had no master. We should not assume her to have been chaste and nunlike. With her husband dead, she could not be accused of infidelity. She likely had no issues about faithfulness to her divine husband Amen-Re, either, because we know the God’s Wives of Amen were allowed to marry at this time.¹⁷

Indeed, it is quite likely that Hatshepsut had lovers, affairs, trysts, whatever we want to call them. All the academic speculation about Senenmut being Hatshepsut’s lover seems rather silly, as if this man were her only opportunity for an affair. Given her position of power and her lack of a husband, she could have had relationships with any number of officials, young or old, male or female. Why would we expect Hatshepsut to have embraced celibacy when she was the person to whom all looked for favor? When she took lovers, did her courtiers look the other way, or were her attachments openly acknowledged and welcomed at court meals and parties? Did she love any of her men (or women)? Did she ever have a real partner with whom she could share anxieties or talk through strategies? None are depicted in any of her formal art because there was no ideological need to record such personal details in a sovereign’s life. No lovers or romantic partners are mentioned anywhere in the informal documents, either, not that we should expect them. Economic records, graffiti, and letters are devoid of any mention of Hatshepsut’s (or any other ruler’s) conquests.¹⁸

Even so, Egyptologists have often speculated whether Senenmut might have been Hatshepsut’s lover, perhaps her principal one. For example, some have even suggested that a sexual graffito found in the tombs above Deir el-Bahri showing a woman being taken from behind actually represents a political satire of Hatshepsut and her submission to her lover Senenmut, even though the subservient figure in this scene is not labeled as Hatshepsut and wears no uraeus or other mark of kingship or rule.¹⁹ There is no reason to identify these graffiti as Hatshepsut’s. On the other hand, the fact that Senenmut’s burial chamber would later lie within the precincts of Hatshepsut’s funerary temple, and that the two owned sarcophagi seemingly designed and made as a pair means that such speculations do not easily die.

Supposing that Hatshepsut did engage in sexual activity during Thutmose III’s reign, she still had to be careful. She was a young woman, and a pregnancy might cause problems politically.²⁰ Her husband’s legacy as king was over, and any child she gave birth to at this point would have to remain unacknowledged. She had already been given the opportunity to bear the next heir, and after that failure, the next king had to be fathered by Thutmose III. We know that the Egyptians were capable of dealing with both the prevention and termination of pregnancy.²¹ If necessary, Hatshepsut had these options available to her.

She knew that she could never be seen to bear or formally acknowledge another child, but how she confronted this fact emotionally eludes us. Perhaps Hatshepsut experienced profound grief at the loss of future children. Or possibly her work consumed her so that another child was the farthest thing from her mind. It could have been around this time that Hatshepsut lost a daughter,²² a blow that would have stung this young mother. In the ancient world, the sad but common loss of one child was often ameliorated by the birth of another, but this was not to be for Hatshepsut. She may not even have allowed herself the space to grieve for the little girl, because her duties demanded a compartmentalized existence that left no room for such weaknesses.

Grief was a part of Hatshepsut’s life, but her precarious position as regent demanded some creative thinking to secure a place for herself during Thutmose III’s reign, and perhaps even beyond his tenure if he succumbed to an early death. There is some indication that Hatshepsut was busy building a political foundation for herself as an unattached woman standing behind the throne of Egypt’s king. A series of monuments from Karnak²³ show her in the company of the new king Thutmose III, depicted not as a child but as the idealized and fully functional man he would soon become; Hatshepsut seems to be saying that this is the glorious future that will come to pass if she is allowed to continue her support. Elsewhere on this monument she is depicted accompanying the king (shown fully grown) in the presence of the gods, signifying to the Egyptian elite both that she had brought about Thutmose III’s rule and that their positions of wealth and power would be in jeopardy if she were not around. Whether she held a formally defined position or not, Hatshepsut knew how to cloak herself in the legitimacy and necessity of temple ideology.

 Hatshepsut was playing a cool and, some might even say, calculated game. She established an unbreakable connection to every sphere of power in Egypt, including palaces, temples, and army. She already had Thutmose III and his mother under her control; they were dependent on her for their own positions until the boy king came of age. Her trusted official Senenmut continued to run her palace finances as steward, and she was now using him for tasks beyond the sphere of her household. As for the army, there is some evidence that continued campaigns in Nubia, under her command, enriched everyone with the movable wealth of gold and minerals.²⁴ Her rewards to the Amen temple during the reign of her husband were significant, so much so that there is little doubt that the Amen priesthood fully supported her continued rule as regent. It is likely that other temple hierarchies, such as those in Memphis or Heliopolis, were keyed to Theban religious politics, and the evidence suggests that Hatshepsut also compensated religious institutions outside of Thebes. The documentation of her building activity in temples throughout Egypt during her regency indicates a level of construction, job creation, and income for priests and temple bureaucrats that had never been seen before in Egypt. Hatshepsut’s regency for Thutmose III was probably quite popular among most Egyptians, especially if they were generals, priests, or treasurers—not bad people to have on your side.

And throughout all of this, Hatshepsut continued solidifying and expanding her influence. She never seems to have assumed more authority than she could handle or more than the Egyptians could give. But when there was an opening, Hatshepsut seized the opportunity. She made political moves incrementally, constructing her base of support slowly, as well as broadly, using many different arenas of power to engender backing and many different individuals to help her get it. In other words, Hatshepsut never favored the palace to the detriment of the army or played one side against another. And she never attempted a glorious, momentous coup, which in one bold stroke would have pushed Thutmose III from power. Hatshepsut was practical and elegant, not devious and cunning. She was intelligently ambitious.

To rule Egypt effectively, Hatshepsut needed to delegate authority to officials whom she could trust. Senenmut, her lead administrator and steward, was soon placed in charge of Nefrure’s household finances as well. But even more important than Senenmut at this early point in her regency was an official with the unwieldy name of Ahmose Pennekhbet. He was part of an old and venerable family from the southern Egyptian city of el-Kab who had served the royal family for generations. Hatshepsut designated him chief treasurer.²⁵ Ahmose Pennekhbet controlled the finances for all of Egypt, monitoring taxes and other income, as well as all expenditures. He opened the House of Gold (in the company of the vizier) every day. He was responsible for all the state’s wealth inside its treasuries, including commodities such as grain and other food stores, stone, metal, and linens. As the man who essentially bankrolled her regency, he was one of the early financial sources of Hatshepsut’s power.

Men with economic authority allowed her to sustain power after the death of her husband and into the reign of Thutmose III; indeed, the continued existence of the Thutmoside line was in their best interest. Hatshepsut knew that Ahmose Pennekhbet was essential and also named him as a tutor to her eldest daughter, Nefrure. As with Senenmut, being a tutor implied a close familial relationship with one’s charge; Hatshepsut seems to have wanted to keep Egypt’s money in the family, so to speak.

Senenmut did not lag far behind Ahmose Pennekhbet in his own career advancement, and his ambitions began to carry him beyond the confines of the royal palace. Hatshepsut asked him to oversee the carving and transport of obelisks for Karnak Temple from the southern granite quarries at Aswan, a hundred miles south of Thebes; he recorded his efforts on a monumental relief during the job. Because much of Karnak was archaic and constructed of mud brick, Hatshepsut, like her father before her, had a desire to renew it in stone. She envisioned a pair of granite obelisks shooting up to the sky, able to catch the rays of the sun and gilded along their length.²⁶ She yearned to show the world wonders not seen for hundreds of years and entrusted this duty to Senenmut. He acknowledged her supremacy in turn: one of the statues he produced during her regency names only Hatshepsut as his master, noticeably and aberrantly omitting the actual ruling king, Thutmose III. As steward to the queen and her daughter during the reign of Thutmose II, Senenmut had been an essential part of Hatshepsut’s palace administration in direct service to the royal family. But Hatshepsut seems to have decided during her regency to entrust him with even more responsibility, concluding that she could rely on him during this time of great political uncertainty for Egypt and for herself.

Soon after she appointed Ahmose Pennekhbet treasurer, she named Senenmut to the same post. Somehow the two men were meant to act as equal partners in the position, but the mechanics of how this worked are lost to us. And this was becoming a pattern, since she named both Ahmose Pennekhbet and Senenmut as tutor to Nefrure. It is almost as if Hatshepsut wanted Senenmut to watch over Ahmose Pennekhbet or vice versa. Regardless, she seems to have depended on this pair of officials to keep the two most sacred sources of her power safe at this early stage in her regency: her money, with which she could keep all her officials happy, and her daughter, who acted as God’s Wife and who would soon be queen, finally cementing an incontrovertible connection to the new king.

The nature of each man’s personal dealings with Hatshepsut remains a mystery, and we know even less about their relationship to each other. Did she appoint the two men to the same office so that neither could become overly powerful from access to all of Egypt’s wealth? Had experience with competition taught the Egyptian elite to create a system of government that avoided such a concentration of power in one man? The country already had a tradition of two viziers, one for the north and one for the south. Perhaps Hatshepsut was simply continuing this approach of checks and balances among her officials.

These two men could not have had more different backgrounds. Unlike Senenmut, Ahmose Pennekhbet came from a patrician family who lived in el-Kab, a town close to Thebes, and he had served the early Eighteenth Dynasty kings in their campaigns against the fleeing Hyksos in Syria-Palestine, getting rich in the process on the spoils of war. He seems to have established his career in the military and later became ensconced in the upper echelons of palace administration and finance. The family tombs at el-Kab suggest that Ahmose Pennekhbet’s wife was a wet nurse to Thutmose III, probably a move made by Hatshepsut to keep this important official close—the family’s residence would have been in a palace apartment to accommodate his wife’s duties.

Senenmut, in contrast, was one of Hatshepsut’s “new men”; he came from more humble beginnings. And unlike his patrician colleague, he left absolutely no evidence of a wife or children. Not one of his dozens of statues, reliefs, and temple depictions records the existence of a family of his own. Without a doubt, if anything should make us wonder about the nature of his relationship with Hatshepsut, it is his lack of a wife. All Egyptian elites married. If a wife died in childbirth or from disease, an official usually married again. To not have any mention of a female partner anywhere in his extensive historical record is more than strange—it is aberrant. And so we wonder if he blatantly ignored his family to please Hatshepsut, because they were in fact lovers, or if there was something else going on. Senenmut’s historical record is much more extensive than that of any other official at the time, but it seems that some of Hatshepsut’s other officials also made no mention of their families on their tombs or statues.²⁷ Perhaps such absences were demanded by a jealous mistress, and if so then there is a lot more about Hatshepsut’s character that we do not know.

Of course, homosexuality might seem another possible explanation for Senenmut’s lack of a wife. The ranks of Egyptian elites undoubtedly included some men with same-sex desires, and some of these men might even have been able to talk of their sexual interests openly. But all our evidence indicates that such men would have still married in the hopes of having sons to inhabit their offices after their death. A man’s future lay with his children. An official’s prosperous retirement rested with his son’s ability to take over his profession. Senenmut’s lack of a wife (or lack of mention, at least) and the great favor Hatshepsut showed toward him do indeed raise suspicions, despite the probable twenty-year difference in their ages.²⁸ These are interesting conjectures, but because other officials neglected to mention their wives in their tomb chapels, Senenmut’s similar omission confirms nothing about his lifestyle, let alone his relationship with Hatshepsut.

We might wonder if Thutmose III felt shut out of this close circle created by Hatshepsut, her daughter, and Senenmut. The latter’s role as tutor must have fostered a tight relationship with the princess, and his many jobs for Hatshepsut certainly kept the bureaucrat in constant contact with the female king. Indeed, some of Senenmut’s earliest statues created during Hatshepsut’s regency,²⁹ when Thutmose III was a sole but infant king, include no mention of the boy at all, a not-so-subtle testament to what Senenmut thought of the new king’s importance in relation to his mistress.

 Most of Hatshepsut’s story thus far has been tied to Thebes, not only because so many of her temples and texts have been preserved in its desert sands but also because this was, in truth, the base of her power. Hatshepsut’s royal family was buried at Thebes, in what we now call the Valley of the Kings. Her priestess position as God’s Wife of Amen was centered in Thebes. Amen’s temple of Ipet-Sut at Karnak had grown to become one of the richest and most influential religious institutions in the land. But Egypt was a much larger political entity, essentially an oasis expanse stretched from north to south over hundreds of miles and inhabitable only where the Nile cut through and inundated its desert sands. Hatshepsut would have known that control of Thebes was not enough. She needed to ensure that she had all the provinces and local governors in line, that taxes were collected, that temples were maintained and priests were happy with their income, that government and judicial activity was happening as it should. To do this, Hatshepsut needed to contend with the dozens of governors and mayors of the forty-two regions up and down the Nile and in the delta. She thus employed numerous royal heralds who traveled throughout Egypt and abroad with authority to speak for the king and, probably, to bestow his favors upon loyal officials.

She also had to focus sharp attention on the administration of Nubia, a land of gold mines and stone quarries, but also the home of a subjugated people full of resentment and hostility. The Egyptian viceroy of Nubia bore the formal title King’s Son of Kush; because of the extensive and dangerous travel required, it was a stressful position that was frequently vacant. However, the risky job promised a huge payoff in return: Nubia controlled more cold hard exchangeable wealth, in the form of gold and other minerals, than anywhere else in the known world. The vast distances between Kush and the royal court, or the Egyptian army, were temptation enough for many an administrator to take more than his due. Free access to the most fungible wealth available in the ancient world seemed to seduce many of the Egyptian men put in charge of Nubia; as a result, removal from office was common and demanded with impunity. Hatshepsut, however, seems to have handled these potential pitfalls with care and attention and kept a firm hand on the men who administered Nubia for her.³⁰

In year 5 of Thutmose III’s reign, Hatshepsut made a crucial appointment to her government. She designated a man called Useramen as vizier in the south.³¹ The vizier acted as the king’s lieutenant in all administrative, military, and economic matters. Useramen was stationed at Thebes, and Hatshepsut seems to have relied on him for her most important state business.

The vizier worked closely with the treasurers, monitoring the security of the storerooms holding all the household goods and wealth and administering the tax income that was the palace’s lifeblood. Hatshepsut knew that Useramen would require strong working relationships with Senenmut and Ahmose Pennekhbet. The three men must have been thrown into one another’s company a great deal, but the nature of their interactions—friendly or hostile or suspicious—remains unknown.

Useramen acted as the lieutenant of Hatshepsut, not Thutmose III. This southern vizier must have been invested in Hatshepsut’s well-being, because, if someone had wanted to see Hatshepsut dead, Useramen could have easily arranged it. He also controlled Hatshepsut’s communication with the rest of Egypt: he was the main conduit, through a legion of royal heralds, between the capital cities and the local rulers spread out across the Two Lands. The royal heralds reported directly to Useramen and kept him abreast of all activities throughout the country; he then distilled, filtered, and relayed this information to Hatshepsut in person. He could easily have deceived Hatshepsut on large and small matters, but there is no evidence of such subterfuge or the need for it. We can imagine the two of them together in her smaller audience hall working out plans of action for specific troubles and issues. As always, Hatshepsut continued to choose her advisers shrewdly.

Useramen also oversaw all southern military expeditions, all trade excursions, all taxes, and all royal works projects like temple building or the construction of the king’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. He may have even organized trade with Syrian and Minoan palaces and encouraged contact with peoples whose existence had never before been acknowledged by the elites in Thebes. Contact with the Keftiu of Crete, for instance, was considered so exotic and fashionable that every Theban official who kept up with the trends included a scene in his tomb chapel of these Minoan men in their colorful woolen garments, holding luxurious commodities.

Useramen must have been a close and trusted confidant and supporter of Hatshepsut. She appointed him after five years of regency, when she was probably in her early twenties, mature enough to know her own mind and abilities and experienced enough to have been betrayed more than once by undependable and self-interested officials. Useramen’s loyal service was abundantly rewarded with bonuses, a fine tomb, and rich monuments. He kept her unorthodox position as regent safe. He kept her family safe. He kept her money safe. And he kept tribute and taxes flowing into the palace. In return, Hatshepsut compensated him with things more valuable than money, such as secret and, to the Egyptians, profoundly powerful texts only available to priests of the highest initiation that thus far had been inscribed only in the tombs of kings. Useramen actually had the otherwise-royal Book of Amduat painted in his burial chamber,³² which ostensibly gave him the same access to the mysteries and powers of the solar barque as the king and chief priest. All the evidence indicates that Useramen’s constancy was crucial for Hatshepsut to maintain her dominance during the early reign of Thutmose III, and she gave whatever was required to secure it.

Hatshepsut did not overlook her state temples: indeed, she put the staffing of Egypt’s temples at the top of her agenda; she must have known it was a key to her success and one of the pillars of Thutmose III’s young kingship. She was instrumental in professionalizing Egypt’s religious arm. Temples that had previously functioned with short-term service by local elites were now staffed with full-time administrators and priests trained specifically for a life in religious service. These men had access to vast sums of cash and grain, but these were resources taken from the stores of the gods, not the wealth of the king. By all accounts, a veritable army of religious men rose under the rule of Hatshepsut, and she likely saw political wisdom in creating a legion of devoted godly supporters. Many of these priestly offices became hereditary and were passed down from father to son, thus increasing the position’s long-term value. High-level priestly appointments were Hatshepsut’s to give as she chose. For instance, she or her mother, Ahmes, may have appointed Hapuseneb as High Priest of Amen during the latter years of Thutmose II. He oversaw the construction projects at Karnak and Luxor, massive works funded by the hoards of gold streaming in from Nubia, and he set in motion Hatshepsut’s aim to create the most lavish and awe-inspiring monuments the world had ever seen.

Hatshepsut kept her eyes on the problems of the present moment, but at the same time she had a responsibility to consider eternity. Egyptians traditionally constructed their tombs during their lifetime, and Hatshepsut was no exception. Accordingly, probably while Thutmose II was still alive or soon after his death, Hatshepsut began a tomb for herself in a remote valley (the Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida) in the far south of the vast Theban necropolis.³³ To hold her body, she commissioned a precious sarcophagus of quartzite that was placed in the tomb to await her death. However, Hatshepsut would soon abandon this tomb and the priceless body container, commissioning a new, bigger, and more beautiful sarcophagus.

 Hatshepsut had set all the pieces in place. She handpicked the tutors and nurses of the young king-in-training. She worked with loyal temple personnel grateful for her gifts and cognizant of the depth of her own religious capacities. She had Egypt’s financiers in her pocket; some of them even served as tutor to her daughter in her own home. She now needed to co-opt the venerable families of Egypt by appointing as midlevel officials young men who would continue to support her and her ongoing rule for the king. But here she was at a disadvantage: typically a prince raised at court would have trusted childhood friends with whom he had shared lessons and beatings and with whom he had grown up to be skilled in the ways of war and administration; later, were he to become king, he could rely upon these fast and tested friends. Hatshepsut had no such intimate companions, no pool of men of known character to be handpicked to serve as new officials, and Thutmose III was obviously too young to have any of his own. Raised as a princess, Hatshepsut was likely separated from the young men who were now candidates for office, and yet she needed them to fill many positions: royal butlers, priests, overseers of stables, fan bearers (bodyguards), overseers of works, royal barbers, and physicians. Hatshepsut seems to have solved the problem with a combination of intimidation and money. Upstart lieutenants may have been kept in line with threats to their lives and livelihoods—a rare occurrence, most likely, but one visible in her later texts about disloyalty being treated with death. Spreading around money was easier than bullying. With economic co-option built into their political system and with tribute pouring in from Egypt’s recently expanded empire, new officials could be assured of great payoffs in exchange for their support of this unconventional and drawn-out regency.

While Hatshepsut was shoring up her power with the appointment of trustworthy men, Thutmose III was no longer a baby. Now more than halfway through his first decade, his position as boy king had been protected by Hatshepsut, which gave him the luxury of gently growing into his position. We can imagine him hanging around the palace and watching Hatshepsut work with her loyal and well-rewarded men. He would have spent a great deal of time in the temple and throne room with her as business was being conducted, perhaps a small boy sitting on a gilded throne too big for him, next to his regent’s own, smaller seat.

What was it like to be a child in these formal circumstances and with such high stakes on the line? Thutmose III must have been a healthy boy; he survived when so many died. But we have little insight into his character as a child: Did he laugh often and get into trouble in the audience chamber? Was he scolded by the High Priest of Amen during sacred temple rituals when he swiped a piece of the Great God’s food for his own enjoyment? Did the vizier Useramen take him under his wing and explain complicated tax proceedings during the annual grain count, or did the treasurer Senenmut regale the young king with stories of how difficult it was to quarry stone for the obelisks of Amen’s temple?

Thutmose III’s relationship with all these officials must have been stimulating and constantly evolving. They knew he was king, a true son of Thutmose II and grandson of the great campaigner Thutmose I, and as such that he must be treated with respect. But a young boy can still act like a brat, a trickster, or a silly fool to be taught a lesson. As he got older and settled into more responsibility and decision making, Thutmose III must have demanded more consideration and authority from his officials. But for now, he was just a child. And it seems he did what he was told to do. Meanwhile, Hatshepsut was negotiating a few more steps forward in her own career.

At about this time, Hatshepsut was laying the delicate groundwork to relinquish the position of God’s Wife of Amen, the very role that had given her access to power few women ever knew. Evidence from early Karnak monuments of this period shows Hatshepsut as the King’s Great Wife offering wine vessels to the god, while behind her Nefrure, her daughter, stands as a high priestess. This is the first time we see Nefrure labeled as God’s Wife of Amen.³⁴ It’s hard to know when Hatshepsut gave up her God’s Wife title, but it seems to have been within these first five years of regency; perhaps she even shared the position with her daughter during a transitional period.

Hatshepsut was in her early twenties, and strange as it may seem to us, she was probably too old to act as the sexual exciter of the god anymore. Perhaps she was expected to pass this role off to a younger female who could continue to facilitate the rebirth of the god every morning. Hatshepsut’s loss of this vital position may have been the alarm inciting her call for even more power, to claim a defined and definite authority that she could never possess as regent.

Indeed, Hatshepsut’s training of Nefrure may have gone hand in hand with her own future plans to maintain rule. Her choice of Nefrure as the next God’s Wife was politically astute. The girl was her daughter, but she was also Thutmose III’s half sister. Hatshepsut was taking another step forward by transferring the office to her own daughter, linking the holder of the God’s Wife post to the current ruler, Thutmose III. But without that temple office, Hatshepsut was herself left floating in a limbo of ill-defined and poorly justified authority. With Thutmose III growing taller and more aware with every new year, Hatshepsut needed to lay the foundations for another type of power.