Hatshepsut Enthroned

Hatshepsut as King
Early Dynasty 18; joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (1479–1458 B.C.E.)
Crystalline (indurated) limestone, painted; H. 76 3/4 in. (195 cm), W. 19 3/4 in. (49 cm), D. 44 7/8 in. (114 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Rogers Fund, MMA 29.3.2

From Museum website:
"Hatshepsut, the best known of several female rulers of Egypt, declared herself king sometime between years 2 and 7 of the reign of her stepson and nephew, Thutmose III. This lifesize statue shows her in the ceremonial attire of an Egyptian pharaoh, traditionally a man's role. In spite of the masculine dress, the statue has a distinctly feminine air, unlike most other representations of Hatshepsut as pharaoh. Even the kingly titles on the sides of the throne are feminized to read "the Perfect Goddess, Lady of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt)" and "Bodily Daughter of Re (the sun god).""

Seated Statue of Hatshepsut
ca. 1473-1458 B.C.E.; Dynasty 18; reign of Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III; New Kingdom
Egyptian; Western Thebes
Red granite; H. 65 3/4 in. (167 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1929, Torso lent by Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (L. 1998.80) (29.3.3)

My own photo rather blurry, I include this excellent one by Wally Gobetz who gives 'creative commons'
He notates that he found her in the Sackler Wing (Was this when the special exhibition of Hatshepsut was on?)

Photo by Rob Koopman, via Wikipedia

This statue travels between the Met and Leiden museums. Mr. Koopman captured it during its sojourn at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

(From Museum website)
"This graceful, life-size statue depicts Hatshepsut in female attire, but she wears the nemes headcloth, a royal attribute usually reserved for the reigning king. In the columns of text inscribed beside her legs on the front of the throne, she has already adopted the throne name Maatkare, but her titles and epithets are still feminine. Thus, she is Lady of the Two Lands and Bodily Daughter of Re. On the back of the throne, part of an unusual and enigmatic scene is preserved. At the left is the goddess Ipi, a protective deity depicted as a pregnant hippopotamus with feline legs who wears a crocodile draped across her head and down her back and carries knives. This goddess was the protector of pregnant women and of children and thus would have been associated with the reigning queen. This mixture of attributes belonging to king and queen suggests that the statue comes from the time when Hatshepsut was making the transition from queen regent to coruler with her nephew Tuthmosis III.

"In the early 1920s the Museum's Egyptian Expedition excavated numerous fragments of the statue near Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri in western Thebes. The torso, however, had been found in 1869 and was in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. A recent loan has allowed the pieces to be reunited for the first time since the statue was destroyed in about 1460 B.C.E."

"Some years after Hatshepsut's death, late in his reign, Thutmose III ordered her name and image erased whenever found; the names of her father, Thutmose I, and her husband, Thutmose II, replaced hers. Her statues and the avenue of sphinxes at Deir el Bahri were smashed to pieces and thrown into pits and gullies. Her obelisks were bricked up amd her buildings at Karnak dismantled. The proscribing of her name and image occurred throughout Egypt. There are many theories as to the cause of what has been described as a damnatio memoriae and as to why it was twenty years in coming."(From _The Encylopedia of the Egyptian Pharoahs_ by Darrell D. Baker, page 110)