Hatshepsut Found!

Two posts ago, I started telling you about one of my favorite Royal Ladies; Queen Hatshepsut. A little over a year ago, in June of 2007, Hatshepsut's mummy was finally identified. She had been found in a mummy cache in a Valley of the King's tomb, KV60.

The cache was series of secret tombs in which agents of the High Priests of Amun, who controlled the Theban area during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties, hid the bodies of many of the kings and queens of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Dynasties. They may have stripped both the mummies and the royal tombs of most of their valuables; they also acted piously, to protect the royal remains from the tomb robbers, which were rampant, even in antiquity.

When the mummies from that tomb were brought up, the mummy we now know as Hatshepsut was mostly ignored, for one very simple reason—she was fat.

However, what they did have were Hatshepsut's canopic jars, and a wooden canopic box bearing her cartouches. The box was the real treasure—inside was Hatshepsut's mummified liver and a single tooth.

The tooth fit into the head of the heavy woman with millimeters to spare, so she was indeed the long missing queen.

Subsequent DNA tests have proved it conclusively, we indeed have Hatshepsut's mummy.

From the information that we have about her, Hatshepsut's last few years weren't very comfortable.

" . . . Bald in front but with long hair in back, the mummy of Hatshepsut shows an obese woman just over 5 feet tall, with rotten teeth . . .[the]examination of the mummy's mouth and her missing molar. . .revealed very poor dental hygiene."

"Her mouth shows the presence of many dental cavities, periapical (root) inflammation and pockets," Ashraf Selim, the radiologist at Cairo University who examined the mummy, told Discovery News.

Obesity and poor oral hygiene suggested to Selim and colleagues that she might have suffered from diabetes.

But, Selim said, "Surely this is just a theory based on this circumstantial evidence, which we cannot confirm."

One thing, however, is certain: Hatshepsut had cancer, cancer that had metastasized.

"The type of cancer we discovered is affecting the pelvic bone, specifically the left iliac bone. From its location, character and the few tiny foci of bone rarefaction in the spine, we concluded that this tumor is a metastatic deposit rather than a primary tumor," Selim said.

Though bone cancer could not be totally ruled out, Selim said he believed it was more likely that another kind of tumor spread to the bone.

"It could have been a tumor affecting the lung, breast or kidney," Selim said.

Whatever the tumor's origins, it is very likely that Queen Hatshepsut spent her last days in pain.

"A bone tumor is certainly painful. The picture emerging from the mummy is not only unflattering, but would indicate rather poor health. But with the data at our disposal, I think any diagnosis is merely speculative," Gino Fornaciari, professor of forensic anthropology at the University of Pisa, told Discovery News."

From Discovery News

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I am glad that the theories that her step-son/nephew Thutmoses III killed her can be laid to rest, but it does seem like a sad ending for such a forward looking woman. But, despite all Thutmoses III's careful planning, Hatshesput's name will not be forgotten and she will live forever.

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The embedding has been disabled, but this is an interesting interview with Dr. Hawass on the finding of Hatshepsut. It is 6 minutes long. The Lost Queen of Egypt Interview

Great Royal Lady

Who are the Great Queens of the world?

Catherine the Great maybe?

What about Cleopatra?

Or Queen Victoria?

Queen Elizabeth I perhaps?

If you said 'yes' to any of these ladies, you would be absolutely right. But there would still be one name missing from your list: the Horus, mighty by his Kas, the lord of East and West abounding in years, the good goddess, the pious lady, the golden falcon, divine in her rings, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Kamara, the daughter of Ra, Khnumit Amon, Hatshepsut.

This 18th Destiny Egyptian Queen was the daughter of Thuthmose I (1506 - 1493 BC) and Queen Ahmose. Her elder brother, Wadjmose, died before his father, so when Tuthmose I died, Hatshepsut married her younger half-brother/cousin, Tuthmose II. The reason for this was because the kingship was bestowed through the female line though no female could be pharaoh.

Tuthmose II (1492-1479 BC) was a weak man, physically and possibly mentally, which may be a result of too much inbreeding. May Egyptologists believe Hatshepsut was the true power behind his throne. Together, they had at least one child, a daughter named Neferure, and Tuthmose II had a son with a concubine. That boy was engaged to Neferure, and would one day become Tuthmose III.

When Tuthmose II died, his young son became Tuthmose III. The boy was far too young to rule on his own, so his step-mother/aunt, Hatshepsut stepped in as regent. After two years of pretending joint rule, Hatshepsut sent the boy away to a temple to study for the priesthood and put herself on the throne. Her reign brought 20 years of peace to Egypt.

Now free of that pretense, Hashepsut hired a scholar named Senmut to teach her daughter, and competently administered the affairs of state. Most importantly, she had the backing of the high priests. Without it, they could have destroyed her in an instant.

Hatshepsut' s rule is often looked at negatively or reduced to a few lines in older Egyptology books because she chose to expand Egypt's bordered without fighting anyone.

On an expadition to Punt, a country in Black Africa, though no-one is sure exactly where Punt is, many goods were brought back. Included in that list was an incense known as antyu, ivory, and ebony. There were also animal skins; giraffes, panthers and cheetahs which were worn by temple priests, and enough live animals to start a small zoo.

Hatshepsut built her morturary temple at Deir el-Bahri, though she was never buried there.

Then, Hatshepsut's reign abruptly ends and Tuthmose III comes back to the throne. The first thing he does is hop in a chariot and head off to start a war. During his reign, he captured over 350 cities and is some times called the Napoleon of his day.

Near the end of his bloody reign, in order to legitimize the succession of his son by a lesser wife, Tuthmose III went on a campaign to remove all traces of Hatshepsut. He took her name out of the Pheronic records, broke or removed the faces of her statues and chizled her name off of the buildings and temples.

In Ancient Egyptian culture, if someone remembered your name, you truely lived for ever. Your soul would die permanently if your name was forgotten, and he wanted her gone.

NEXT: HATSHEPSUT FOUND!

Great Pyramid Astronomy

I have NASA and Astronomy listed as off topic, but in a way, they are actually a huge part of archaeology, and Egyptology. The Ancient Egyptian who was in charge of the building of the first true pyramid was Imhotep. Imhotep was an astronomer, High Priest of the sun god Ra, and chancellor to the Pharaoh Djoser (Zo-sir)(reigned c.2630 - c.2611 BC).

The pyramid Imhotep built is called the Step Pyramid and is at Saqqara. The pyramid was massive by the standards of the time; the base covered 37 acres (0.05 mi.), which was the size of a fairly large town then. The pyramid has six steps or mastaba, rising to a height of 197ft, with the base 397x358 feet sq. and it contains 11,668,000 cubic feet of clay and stone.

Underground, the pyramid goes down for 3 1/2 miles of tunnel, shafts, stairwells, galleries, vaults, and passages.

How does this relate to astronomy? Well, Djoser's grandson, Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops his Greek name), took his grandfather's tomb to the next level so to speak, and built the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The axis of the pyramid is lined up with what the Egyptians called the "hoof star," in the constellation of the Bull's Foreleg (outlined in black in the image; click for larger view). We call the star Benetnasch or Alkaid, and it is part of Ursa Major--the Great Bear constellation.

The Great Pyramid is the most accurately aligned of all the Egyptian pyramids; the average deviation from True North is a little more than 3 minutes of a degree. That means that the foundation is level to within less than an inch of True North.

In 2000, Kate Spade, a scientist at Cambridge University--pointed out something interesting. When the Great Pyramid was built, it's accuracy was perfect and now it has shifted. She thinks it is because the Earth's axis tilt rotates somewhat like a gyroscope, so the celestial North Pole seems to move. The rate of movement is so slow it is imperceptible to the naked eye since the cycle takes nearly twenty-six thousand years to complete.

However, when the pyramid was built, no one star was aligned to True North. The stars that could potentially have been used weren't in the correct place until seventy years after the pyramid was built, so the debut continues as to which stars were used.


Information from Building the Great Pyramid by Kevin Jackson and Jonathan Stamp pub. 2003 by Firefly Books Ltd.

Image of the Denderah Zodiac is from here. The bold line was added by me for clarity.

Mummies

When most people think about Ancient Egypt, there are two things that usually pop into their heads-Tutankhamen's fantastic gold funerary mask, and mummies. Well, King Tut's mask has been written about ad nausea, so we won't go there.

What I think is interesting is that we as a culture devote much of our time in finding ways to die slower (we've put the immortality thing on the back burner until the technology improves), but yet, we are so fascinated with what other cultures do with their dead.

Perhaps it is because we try to get away from our dead-dress 'em up, box 'em up, and move 'em out as quickly as possible. For the Egyptians, death wasn't stopping. It was the road to a better plane of existence, where you farmed in perfect weather and plenty, and you could feast forever in the company of the gods.

Assuming of course, when your heart was weighed in the Hall of Justice before the 42 Natural Laws, against the Feather of Truth-that you passed. If not, your heart was consumed by Am-mit.

But I digress. We were talking of mummies.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines a mummy as 1 a: a body embalmed or treated for burial with preservatives in the manner of the ancient Egyptians b: a body unusually well preserved 2: one resembling a mummy.

Wow! That told me a lot!

Mummies of Ancient Egypt was more helpful. Under the section 'What are Mummies?,' we find out that "A mummy is the body of a person (or an animal) that has been preserved after death. Normally when we die, bacteria and other germs eat away at the soft tissues (such as skin and muscles) leaving only the bones behind. Since bacteria need water in order to grow, mummification usually happens if the body dries out quickly after death. The body may then be so well preserved that we can even tell how the dead person may have looked in life.

Mummies are made naturally or by embalming, which is any process that people use to help preserve a dead body. Mummies can be dried out by extreme cold, by the sun, by smoke, or using chemicals such as natron. Some bodies become mummies because there were favorable natural conditions when they died. Others were preserved and buried with great care."

Interesting. What else?

"The ancient Egyptians believed that mummifying a person's body after death was essential to ensure a safe passage to the afterlife."

So how do we make a mummy? For that, I turn to . . .

Sophie & Co - How To Make An Egyptian Mummy




And now, we know how to make a mummy. If you want a slightly more . . . grown-up perspective on mummies, I highly recommend The Virtual Mummy by Sarah U. Wisseman. (Pub. 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, ISBN 0-252-02792-2) University of Illinois Press

It is a small book, only 84 pages, but it describes the virtual unwrapping of a mummy from the Fayum region of Egypt. The mummy is dated from 100 A.D. during the Roman Period of Ancient Egypt's history. The book is written to be readable for the common man, and it offers some interesting insights into the life of a young person who's name we will never know.