Over the past 100 years, Egyptologists thought that when the powerful woman, Pharaoh Hatshepsut, died, her nephew and her successor went to revenge against her, deliberately destroying all her statues and erasing them from public memory.
Well, a new study shows that it’s not the case at all. Many statues of Hatsheptut were intentionally broken, but the reason behind their destruction has nothing to do with her gender or even silencing her presence, Egyptologists say. Rather, according to a study published Tuesday (June 24) in Journal Antiquity, Hatshept statues were broken to “deactivate” them and eliminate the supposed supernatural forces.
Hatshept (which ruled between 1473 and 1458 BC) was a pharaoh known for commissioning a beautiful temple built in Dele Elbari, near ancient Thebes (modern Luxor), and ordering voyages from Egypt to land known as the “Pant.” She was to act as a wife and sister to Pharaoh Totmose II (ruled from 1492 to 1479 BC) and regent to his son-in-law, Thutmose III. But not as a regent, she became her own pharaoh, and Thutmose III acted as a co-intaker with limited power.
You might like it
After Hatsheptut’s death, many of her statues were intentionally broken, including the location of Der El Bali, where archaeologists of the 1920s and 1930s discovered the broken bodies of statues buried in the pits. These were thought to have been broken on the orders of Satmose III after Hatsheps died as a form of retaliation. However, new research suggests that these statues were actually “ritually invalidated” in the same way as statues belonging to other pharaohs.
In this study, Jun Yi Wong, a doctoral candidate in Egyptology at the University of Toronto, looked into archival records of Dale El Bali statues discovered in the 1920s and 1930s. Wong discovers that the statue has not been shattered in his face and that the inscription has not been destroyed. Instead, they were broken in their necks, waists and legs. This is what is found in other Egyptian pharaoh statues during what modern Egyptian scholars call “ritual deactivation.”
The ancient Egyptians saw royal statues as “powerful and perhaps living beings,” Wong told Live Science in an email. When the Pharaohs died, it was common for the ancient Egyptians to invalidate the statue by breaking them with their weaknesses, or with their necks, hips and feet, Wong pointed out.
“Deactivated statue deposits have been found at multiple sites in Egypt and Sudan,” Wong said. “One of the most famous discoveries in Egyptian archaeological history is the Karnak cachet, where hundreds of statues of pharaohs have been discovered in one deposit over the centuries. The majority of the statues have been “deactivated.” ”
Related: Why do so many ancient Egyptian statues have broken noses?
This does not mean that Hatshepsut was not the target of political persecution after her death. “There is no doubt that Hatshept suffered from a campaign of persecution. Her image and name are systematically hacked at many monuments across Egypt,” Wong said. “I know that this campaign of persecution was launched by Thutmose III, but I don’t know exactly why.”
The fact that while her statue was successfully invalidated by Deia El Bari’s statue, images and inscriptions elsewhere were violently attacked suggests that the persecution she experienced may not have been for personal reasons.
Other pharaoh statues also suffered ritual deactivation, Wong wrote. The fact that while Deir El-Bahri’s Hatshepsut statue was successfully disabled, her statues on other sites were attacked more violently suggests that Thutmose III may have felt that he had to persecute Hatshepsut for political reasons, including concerns about healing from his supporters.
“Early Egyptologists assumed that Thutmose III must have had a fierce hatred of Hatshepsut, but this is not accurate,” Wong said. “For example, the treatment of statues suggests that Thutmose III was motivated by ritualistic and practical factors, rather than personal hostility.”
Thutmose III would have been “influenced by political considerations, such as whether Hatstutt’s reign was harmful to his legacy as a pharaoh,” Wong said.
Ancient Egyptian Quiz: Test Smart on Pyramids, Hieroglyphs and King Tuto
Source link
