This should be taken with a VERY large grain of salt. Hatshepsut was initially the regent for her stepson, Thutmose III. She usurped his reign and had herself made Pharoah. And a conservative country like Egypt was not accustomed to the idea of a female Pharoah. So this could be her PR/spin/propaganda to justify her seizure of the throne. Dire necessity, the boy’s only 10 [or was it 6], etc.
When she started grooming her daughter for the succession [and Thutmose III was an adult], it gets interesting. Her Vizier [and probable lover], Sennenmut disappears. she dies. Her daughter disappears. And Thutmose III defaces Hatshepsut’s name from any wall, statue, obelisk, etc. he can find it on.
He then goes on to become the greatest military Pharoah in history, which is hard to explain if Egypt was in ruins when his father died, and his stepmother did almost nothing to rebuild the Army, or use it, for some twenty-five years.
sounds like Henry VIII and his problem with the Cardinal Reginald Pole and his family, the Cardinal being not only a Prince of the Church but scion of the Plantagenets.
Thanks PzLdr. The daughter’s tomb is located out in the boonies, high up in a cliff face in the western desert, was plundered at some point, but has AFAIK never received any conservation or even much study. It’s amazing it was even found. Thutmose III had to remove her traces in order to relegitimize his own reign, which had been removed from history. Biblically, he’s the pharaoh known as Shishak.