Historical Women - Merit-Ptah

For this third entry to my Historical Women series I am staying in ancient Egypt, but moving further away in time from Hatshepsut. This woman was called Merit-Ptah and we do not know that much about her other than what can be seen and what is said about her on a tomb in the necropolis close to the step pyramid in Saqqara.

Her name means Beloved of the god Ptah and she was born either during the 2nd or 3rd dynasty in ancient Egypt. Her son was a High Priest and describes her as Cheif Physician which makes her the first woman in history, known by name, that praciticed medicine and she might also be the first known women in science.

She is not to be confused with the wife of Ramose, the Governer of Thebes and Vizier under Akhenaten who shared her name.

Pictures were borrowed here and here. Facts were taken from Wikipedia.

Historical Women - Hatshepsut

Statue of Hatshepsut

I cannot believe I have not done a Historical Women entry since Kristina Nilsdotter Gyllenstierna back in May 2016. Or I did talk about two other historical women in my entry about Johanne Hildebrandt's book Sigrid, Sagan om Valhalla. One of the latter two (Cleopatra VII) can also be considered successor of the woman I will devote this entry to: Hatshepsut.

I am reading a book about her at the moment, The Woman who would be king by Egyptologist Kara Cooney which means that I will probably return to Hatshepsut in another entry in the near future. She is just so amazing and not really so well-known as many other (male) pharaohs (Many people even have trouble saying her name!) wherefore I thought she needed a presentation post as well. There are also other aspects of the book I will devote my book entry to. The Egyptian names can be transcribed in a lot of different ways. I have chosen to use the spelling from Cooney's book in this entry.

Hatchepsut's birth name (upper) and throne name
Maatkare (lower) in hieroglyphics

Hatshepsut was the daughter of the king Thutmes I and his so called Great Wife Ahmes. She seems to have had two brothers who probably died before their father. Thutmes I had, like every other ancient Egyptian king, many other wives besides Ahmes which whom he also had children. However, the royal blood in Ancient Egypt was inheritade from the mother, which is why it was the sons of the Great wives (often also the king's sister - an incestuous tradition which was only allowed for the royal family!) which first and foremost inherited the throne. Because her brothers most likely died, the throne went to a minor wife called Mutnofret's son Thutmes II.

To strengthen the royal blood, Hatshepsut was most likely forced to marry Tuthmes II and with him she had one daughter that survived the baby years called Neferure. With a minor wife called Isis (Just to be clear: To me, Isis is a lovely Egyptian goddess and nothing else!), Tuthmes II had the son Thutmes III. He would inherit the throne when his father died.

Hatshepsut's mummy, found in KV60

Hatchepsuts father had been a strong, stabile king, but his heir was not and he died only a few years into his reign, leaving behind a group of toddlers. As The King's Great Wife, Hatshepsut acted as regent to Tuthmes III before proclaiming herself king after two years. Yes, it is important to say that she was king. Not least since we, today, see the title of queen as lesser to the title king, but first and foremost because that was the title she used for herself.

Sometimes the ancient Egyptian royal names and titles can be somewhat confusing. The names most inportant to know is Hatshepsut's birth name (Hatshepsut) meaning Foremost of noble women and her throne name Maatkare meaning The truth is the soul of Re.

Hatchepsut is not the first woman to rule as king in ancient Egypt. The first that researcher cannot totally ignore being Sobeknefru at the end of the 12th dynasty and there might have been others ruling both in their own name and in the name of their sons/stepsons.

Djeser-Djeseru

While the 18th dynasty in ancient Egypt has a lot of martial warriors, Hatshepsut's reign was peaceful with lots of economic growth. She invested a lot in architecture, not least making Thebes the grand capital of Egypt. Her most famous building is Djeser-Djeseru (Holiest among holy). Her murtuary temple in  Deir el-Bahri. While male pharaos bragged in paintings and reliefs of their military expeditions, Hatshepsut bragged about her much more peaceful expeditions to Punt, a land far south in Afrika.

In the art, she let herself be dressed in the traditional (male) royal attributes like the king's crowns and the fake beard. However, she still has some female traits as well. Her facial features are rather feminine and her chest is not always flat, but you can see female breasts lurking underneath like in the photo of the statue of her above.

Tuthmes III became king when Hatshepsut died. They might also have co-regined for a couple of years before her death. This was pretty common and to smooth the transition of power between kings. In the case of Hatshepsut, she has long seen as more or less "the evil stepmother" who took the throne which rightfully belonged to Tuthmes III. Not least, because he started errasing her name from the monument. To me I would think this was simply because he needed to proclaim he had pure royal blood and therefore had to emphasize his own mother as the King's Great Wife.

As Tuthmes II:s queen, she had a tomb built for her in the Valley of the Kings (KV20). It was excavated by Howard Carter (mostly famous for finding Tutankhamun's tomb) in 1903. It is uncertain if it was ever used. Carter found two sarcophagi for Hatshepsut and her father, but no mummies. The mummy of Tuthmes I was found in the royal mummy cache in Deir-el-Bahri together with 39 other royal mummies in 1881, but Hatshepsut remained lost until 2007 where researcher identified her mummy as one of the two female unidentified ones in the tomb KV60. Studies of her mummy showed that suffered osteoporosis, cancer in her left hip, arthritis and perhaps also diabetes. She did not, however, suffer a violent death.



Hieroglyphic names were borrowed here. The picture of the statue of her was found here, of her mummy here and of her temple here.

Treasures of Ancient Egypt

"We cannot find our future if we forget our past."

~ Alaa Awad, modern Egyptian artist

I have been watching this three part documentary called Treasures of Ancient Egypt where art lover Alastair Sooke discover ancient Egypt through 30 art pieces and what he finds is very intriguing.

At a first glance, ancient Egyptian art seems schematic and static and everything is supposed to be the same over thousands and thousands of years. Sooke, however, finds that there are a lot of things that interupts the static and schematic pictures, making them full of life. Some art pieces also goes more or less against the schematic style. I loved the so called ostraka Sooke finds in the worker's village Deir-el-Medina. They are much more free-styled and a lot of them are also parodies on the official style.

As someone who has studied colonialism/imperialism/cultural meating for awhile I do not really see it as strange that the invaders in Egypt after the New Kingdom tried portraying themselves as Egyptian, but also incorporating their own style, creating a hybrid. This is something I have tackled before, here and here but it might be time for a recap. To me, we are thinking too biologically about the concept of culture, one of the many things we have not been able to shake from modern imperialism of the last two centuries. It is extremely seldom that invaders go in and force their own culture on the colonized groups. This is an idea sprung from imperialism during the last two centuries and only one form out of many types of colonialism. Everyone of them were about power, but not everyone of them has been as devestating as imperialism during the last 200 years. Sooke says that maybe the Greek dynasty, the Ptolemies were not so powerful so they could introduce Greek culture into Egypt. I, however, would rather say that they were smart. They seem to have a much better understanding of cultures and how they interact than we do today. By using history and the old expressions of power in Egypt, they legitimized their right to rule over the Egyptians. They sought to build on the sense of eternity and stability presented in ancient Egyptian art, but like all cultures do as they adopt new traits, they interpreted it through their own cultural logic. This is why we actually can see some Greek influences in Egyptian art from this time. It really is like Egyptian artist Alaa Awad said to Sooke and which I qouted in the beginning. We all must look to the history to find our future.


Picture was borrowed here.