Ancient Egypt is the most interesting time period in the
history of humanity for me. I love reading about the rituals and gods and
architecture that was created by them and practiced for thousands of years. I
love mummies and curses and dank tombs. I love the salacious details of palace
life, including (but not limited to) the family incest that occurred to keep
the royal bloodlines pure. I just love it all and that all-encompassing love of
ancient Egypt that I hold in my heart is why I chose to read The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s
Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt.
So who is Hatshepsut? Well, Hatshepsut
was the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt’s throne when the last pharaoh
failed to produce any viable off-spring and a mother with ties to the previous
dynasty. She was born into a privileged position in the royal household,
and she was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her
father’s family. Her failure to produce a male heir was ultimately the twist of
fate that paved the way for her unheard of rule as a cross-dressing king.
At just over twenty, Hatshepsut ascended to the rank of pharaoh in an elaborate
coronation ceremony that set the tone for her spectacular reign as co-regent
with Thutmose III, the infant king. Hatshepsut was a master strategist,
cloaking her political power plays in the veil of piety and sexual reinvention,
who helped to re-establish hundreds of trade routes not used for generations,
build tremendous monuments to the gods and herself, and show the ancient world
that just because she was female didn’t mean she couldn’t successfully rule
richest, most powerful nation in the world.
The writer of The
Woman Who Would Be King is Dr. Kara Cooney is an Egyptologist and Assistant
Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA who has been a part of the
archaeological teams that excavated at the artisans’ village of Deir el Medina,
Dahshur, and various tombs in Thebes. She’s been the curator of many museum
exhibitions, including one all about Tutankhamun, and she’s worked on two
Discovery Channel documentary series: Out
of Egypt and Egypt’s Lost Queen.
She’s a lady with an immense knowledge/passion for ancient Egypt, and really,
who can blame her? The ancient Egyptians were pretty great!
Hatshepsut is an amazing historical figure but until
recently she’d been nearly completely forgotten by history. Why? Well, the
short answer is that she was a woman who ruled during a prosperous time in
Egypt’s ancient history and the patriarchal system of governance in the ancient
world (and hell, even in today’s world) glazes over such women. History isn’t
for women who do the job successfully, it’s for women who destroy or corrupt or
just do a terrible job at leading because it’s a way to keep women from power!
To only show the lows and no highs allows great female leaders to be swept
under the rug! Oh, excuse me, my feminism is showing again (although all this
is completely true and it’s not like I try to hide my feminist views... but I
digress).
The Woman Who Would Be
King shows Hatshepsut’s life in a speculative way of what she might have
been doing day to day in her royal life and how she might feel about certain
things. It makes the book feel a little more like a novel but the speculation
can become a little tiresome as Cooney will lay something at your feet and then
say (more or less) ‘or it could be the complete opposite of this’. I
understand, she’s covering her tracks as to not disown herself from the
community should she displease them, but books like this are about facts and
discoveries and theories! Don’t cover your tracks because you’re scared of
confrontation–stand proud and explain why you believe what you believe!
My final thoughts on The
Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt are
that it’s a good historical read but I’m biased because I love ancient
Egypt/women’s studies, I just want to say that straight away in case you didn’t
pick up on any of that before. That being said, this is still a good book
(although if you’re not interested in ancient Egypt, the politics of royalty,
biographies, non-fiction, etc, then this book isn’t for you in any way). The Woman Who Would Be King is
informative and written in such a way as to not just be one stuffy fact after
another. It interestingly traces the unconventional life of a female king as
she built one of Egypt’s most prolific/richest building periods but was then
almost forgotten just a few years after her death. Cooney has shown history at
its finest and given Hatshepsut life once more, for (and here comes a history
lesson) in ancient Egypt, to speak the dead’s name is too make them live again.
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