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Hatshepsut (Ancient Egyptian Queen)

WhistlingJack

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'Find of century' for Egyptology



Egyptologists say they have identified the 3,000-year-old mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful female ruler.

Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass made the official announcement at a packed news conference in Cairo.

It is being billed as the biggest archaeological find in Egypt since the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.

Archaeologists hope the mummy, which has lain unrecognised for decades, will yield clues about the mystery of her death and subsequent disappearance.

Mr Hawass has set up a DNA lab near the museum with an international team of scientists to verify the identification.

The study was funded by the US television channel Discovery which is to broadcast a documentary on the subject in July.

An important piece of the evidence is said to be that the mummy has a missing tooth, and the gap matches exactly an existing relic, a preserved tooth engraved with Hatshepsut's name.

Some archaeologists have expressed scepticism about the possibility of using DNA technology to identify the queen.

"It's a very difficult process to obtain DNA from a mummy," US molecular biologist Scott Woodward was quoted as saying by AP news agency.

"To make a claim as to a relationship, you need other individuals from which you have obtained DNA, to make a comparison between the DNA sequences."

DNA is the molecule that contains genetic information in all organisms and can be used to establish family relationships.

In modern times, Hatshepsut's temple was the location of the 1997 Luxor massacre when Islamic militants gunned down 58 foreign tourists, as well as three Egyptian policemen and a tour guide.

Hatshepsut was an important 18th Dynasty ruler in the 15th Century BC, having usurped her stepson, Thutmosis III.

She was known for dressing like a man and wearing a false beard, and was more powerful than either of her more famous female successors, Nefertiti and Cleopatra.

Hatshepsut's funerary temple is one of the most visited monuments around the pharaonic necropolis of the Valley of the Kings in Upper Egypt.

But after her death, her name was obliterated from the records in what is believed to have been her stepson's revenge.

The mummy was found in Tomb KV60, said to be one of the more perplexing tombs in the Valley of the Kings because it contained two unidentified mummies, both of them women.

The tomb was first discovered by Howard Carter in 1903, but it had been ransacked in antiquity and he resealed it. It was re-opened in 1906 and one mummy was removed and identified as Sit-ra, royal nurse of Hatshepsut.

The mummy now said to be of Hatshepsut herself was left behind and did not see the light again until 1990.

Speculation that it is her was fuelled by the fact the mummy's left arm was bent in a pose thought to mark royal burials and it wore a wooden face-piece (possibly to fit a false beard).

Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2007/06/27 10:27:50 GMT
© BBC MMVII
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is my favourite programme of the year! Yes, I know we're not halfway through January yet, but it combines two of my keenest interests, ancient history and sailing ships.

The Pharaoh Who Conquered the Sea

Over three thousand years ago, legend has it that Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's first female pharaoh, sent a fleet of ships to the wonderful, distant land of Punt. A bas-relief in the temple where she is entombed in Luxor shows them bringing back extraordinary treasures. But did this expedition really happen? And if it did, where exactly is the land of Punt?

Drawing upon recent finds, the archaeologist Cheryl Ward sets out to recreate the voyage, in a full-size replica of one of these ancient ships, sailing it in the wake of Hatshepsut's fleet, in search of the mythical land of Punt. A human adventure as well as a scientific challenge, the expedition proves that, contrary to popular belief, the ancient Egyptians had the necessary tools, science and techniques to sail the seas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... d_the_Sea/

Lots of unanswered questions, still, and plenty of detail for experts to debate. I noticed that the ancient Egyptians seemed to use both right-hand and left-hand laid rope, but mostly RH laid - which is the opposite of modern usage.
 
rynner2 said:
This is my favourite programme of the year! Yes, I know we're not halfway through January yet, but it combines two of my keenest interests, ancient history and sailing ships.

The Pharaoh Who Conquered the Sea

A late response, I know, but I really respond to this!

Queen Hatshepsut or Pharoah Hututsu (as the academics argued about) did more and enforced anything than the more famous female "Queen" of Egypt did.
Her husband Tuthmose did much to be a strong Pharaoh and power the Twin-Kingdom but it was Hatshepsut who preserved the strength.
 
Stormkhan said:
rynner2 said:
This is my favourite programme of the year! Yes, I know we're not halfway through January yet, but it combines two of my keenest interests, ancient history and sailing ships.

The Pharaoh Who Conquered the Sea

A late response, I know, but I really respond to this!

Queen Hatshepsut or Pharoah Hututsu (as the academics argued about) did more and enforced anything than the more famous female "Queen" of Egypt did.
Her husband Tuthmose did much to be a strong Pharaoh and power the Twin-Kingdom but it was Hatshepsut who preserved the strength.

I was at the Cairo Antiquity Museum just before Christmas, and the guide told us a story about Hatshepsut. Apparently her son was blamed for her murder for years, but no-one knew where her mummy was to do a post-mortem, it had never been discovered.

The basement was being cleared-out last year in preparation for the move to the museum's multi-million pound site, and someone found her propping a door open! She had been mislabelled and forgotten sixty or seventy years ago.

Hatshepsut's son has now been exonerated - they found that she had died from cancer.
 
A cruel injustice has been corrected. :lol:
 
escargot1 said:
A cruel injustice has been corrected. :lol:

Which one? That her son was accused of killing her or that a Queen was used to prop a door open for 60 years? :?
 
More on Hatshepsut.

Cross-dressing pharaoh found in her feminine form
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... und-i.html
17:53 13 March 2012
Picture of the Day
Caroline Morley, online picture researcher

(Image: Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner)

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt in the 15th century BC in a relatively long and prosperous reign. Despite her success as a female pharaoh, she is often depicted as a man in statues because the belief that pharaohs were sons of the god Amon-Re. Hatshepsut also dressed as a man to meet this expectation.

A statue uncovered in Abydos, Egypt, is thought to show her more feminine side.

An expedition led by a team from the University of Toronto, Canada, found a wooden statue of a king, thought to represent this powerful woman because of its distinctly feminine features: a smaller waist and delicate jawline.

The find also included a private offering chapel, a monumental building and the remains of over 80 animal mummies.

The chapel, where the wooden statue was found, was close to a processional route. The team leader, Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner, said it was used for a long period - 1990-1650 BC.

"The offering chapel proves that people - probably elites - were able to build monuments right next to the processional route in the Middle Kingdom, and that at least one such chapel was allowed to stand in this increasingly densely built-up area and continued to receive offerings even 800 years after its initial construction," says Pouls Wegner.
 
When in the Valley of the Kings last week, our guide excitedly pointed out Tomb KV33 as the site of recent major discoveries.

He told us the tv cameras etc. had been in the valley to record the findings of "Doctor Elena", whom he seemed to know, by sight at least.

In fact, though KV33 had been reopened and explored, it seems the major finds of the aborted 2012 season were in Tomb KV64.

Basel University Report in English

It's astonishing how this very compact area - among the most explored on earth - keeps on giving. :)
 
ocean.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/QD3.1 ... epsut.html
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010081...rterdeck/QD3.1/Elsayed/elsayedhatshepsut.html
See later post for the MIA webpage's content.

Here's the text from the defunct webpage:
Queen Hatshepsut's expedition to the Land of Punt: The first oceanographic cruise?
by Sayed Z. El-Sayed
Queen Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from ca. 1503 to 1480 B.C. In contrast to the warlike temper of her dynasty, she devoted herself to administration and the encouragement of commerce. In the summer of 1493 B.C., she sent a fleet of five ships with thirty rowers each from Kosseir, on the Red Sea, to the Land of Punt, near present-day Somalia. It was primarily a trading expedition, for Punt, or God's Land, produced myrrh, frankincense, and fragrant ointments that the Egyptians used for religious purposes and cosmetics.
We do not know when the ships returned to Kosseir, but Hatshepsut herself informed us in lengthy inscriptions on the walls of her beautiful terraced temple at Deir el-Bahri, near Luxor in the Valley of the Kings, that "the ships were laden with the costly products of the Land of Punt and with its many valuable woods, with very much sweet-smelling resin and frankincense, with quantities of ebony and ivory . . ."

The queens' artists immortalized this homecoming in murals on the walls of the temple, which depict not only potted myrrh saplings and sacks of frankincense, but also fish and other fauna and flora collected during the expedition. The drawings on these walls are so accurate that the famed ichthyologist, the late Carl Hubbs of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told me that he was "able to identify the fish to the species level" from the drawings!

The ancient Egyptians with their penchant for accurate information, and for making precise observations of the environment, had amassed a store of knowledge of the geography, hydrography and meteorology which enabled them to undertake seafaring ventures. In order to navigate to Punt, they must have known the navigational peculiarities of the Red Sea, in which northerly winds bring rough weather from the end of June to December while mild southerlies prevail the rest of the year.

We do not know whether or not Hatshepsut sent other expeditions to the Land of Punt, but later Egyptian monarchs reached the south of Africa and beyond. Herodotus informs us that Necho II, King of Egypt (ca. 600 B.C.) sent Phoenician sailors down to the Red Sea and along the coast of Africa. In the third year they returned through the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar), and reached Egypt via the Mediterranean Sea.

According to William A. Herdmann, author of The Founders of Oceanography and Their Work (1923), it is doubtful whether the circumnavigation of Africa was repeated until Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope from the west two thousand years later, in the 15th century.
 
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