Over the past 100 years, Egyptologists have thought that when the powerful female Pharaoh Hathepsut died, her nephew and her successor have made a vendetta against her, deliberately breaking all her statues to erase her from public memory.
Now, a new study reveals that this is not quite the case. Although many statues of Hatshepsut have been intentionally broken, the reason for their destruction has nothing to do with his sex or even erase his existence, says an Egyptologist. On the contrary, the statues of Hatshesut were broken to “deactivate” them and eliminate their supposed supernatural powers, according to a study published Tuesday, June 24 in the journal Antiquity.
Hatepsut (which ruled around 1473 at 1458 BC) was a pharaoh known for having committed a beautiful temple built in Deir El-Bahri, near the old Thebes (Modern Luxor), and for having commanded a successful trip from Egypt to a known land “Punt“whose precise location is now a question of debate. She was the wife and half of the sister of Pharaoh Thutmose II (reigned around 1492 to 1479 BC) and was supposed to act as a regent for her step-son Thutmose III. However, rather than serving as regent, she has become a pharaoh to himself.
After the death of Hatshepsut, many of its statues were intentionally broken, including on the Deir El-Bahri site, where archaeologists in the 1920s and 1930s found broken remains of its statues buried in pits. It was believed that these were broken on the orders of Thutmose III after the death of Hathepsut, as a form of remuneration. However, the new study suggests that these statues were in fact “ritually disabled” in the same way as the statues belonging to other pharaohs.
In the study, Jun Yi WongA doctoral student in Egyptology from the University of Toronto, examined the archive files of the statues of Deir El-Bahri which were found in the 1920s and 1930s. Wong found that the statues were not broken in the face and had not destroyed their inscriptions. Instead, they were broken around their necks, their size and their feet – something that we see in the statues of other Egyptian pharaohs during a process that modern Egyptologists call “ritual deactivation”.
THE Ancient Egyptians have seen royal statues “as powerful living entities and perhaps even,” said Wong to Live Science in an email. When a pharaoh died, it was common for the ancient Egyptians to deactivate their statues by breaking them at their weak points, or the neck, the size and the feet, noted Wong.
“Disabled statues deposits have been found on several sites in Egypt and Sudan,” said Wong. “One of the best known discoveries in the history of Egyptian archeology is the hiding place of Karnak, where hundreds of statues of pharaohs – of all centuries – were found in a single deposit. The vast majority of statues were” deactivated “.
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This does not mean that Hatshepsut was not a target of political persecution after his death. “There is no doubt that Hatshepsut has undergone a persecution campaign – in many monuments through Egypt, his images and names have been systematically hacked,” said Wong. “We know that this persecution campaign was launched by Thutmose III, but we don’t know exactly why.”
The fact that her statues of Deir El-Bahri were normally disabled while the images and inscriptions of her on other sites have been violently attacked suggest that the persecution she knew may not be for personal reasons.
Statues of other pharaohs have also undergone ritual deactivation, Wong wrote. The fact that the statues of Hathepsut of Deir El-Bahri were normally disabled while statues of it on other sites have been more violently attacked suggest that Thutmose III may have felt that he should persecute Hathepsut for political reasons, as concerns about his reign of his supporters.
“The first Egyptologists assumed that Thutmose III should have an intense hatred towards Hathepsut, but it is unlikely that it is exact,” said Wong. “The treatment of statues, for example, suggests that Thutmose III was motivated by ritual and practical factors, rather than any personal animosity.”
Thutmose III “would have been influenced by political considerations – as if the reign of Hathepsut was detrimental to his inheritance as a pharaoh,” said Wong.
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