Zahi hawass daughter
- •
Throughout the modern era, Hatshepsut, “the King Herself,” has served as a prism through which Egyptologists have reflected their beliefs about sex, gender, and power.
It was one such contradiction that allowed French archaeologist Jean-Francois Champollion, also credited with deciphering the Rosetta Stone, to rediscover the first hints of Hatshepsut’s existence in 1928. While the statues in the inner chambers of Hatshepsut’s Deir el-Bahri temple depicted a pharaoh wearing the striped cobra headdress, false beard and kilt of a king, the inscriptions on the temple walls were decidedly feminine.
Nearly 80 years later in 2007, this linguistic anomaly would lead an Egyptian archaeologist named Zahi Hawass to a mummy on the floor of Hatshepsut’s final resting place in the Valley of the Kings, a necropolis of her own creation. In that time, Egyptologists had come to agree on the broad strokes of her reign.
Born around 1508 BCE to Egypt’s 18th dynasty, Hatshepsut was the eldest daughter of Queen Ahmose and the Pharaoh Thutmose I, a general who married into the royal family after Hatsh
- •
Quest for the Mummy of Hatshepsut
Zahi Hawass
Egyptian kings have magic for all of us. But even more than kings, queens—especially the great ones like Nefertiti and Cleopatra—capture our imaginations. It is perhaps Hatshepsut, who was both king and queen, who is the most fascinating.
We know that only four women became pharaohs in ancient Egypt. Three of these ruled at the end of dynasties, when power was slipping from the hands of the ruling houses. There was Nitokerty (Nitocris) from the end of the Old Kingdom; Sobekneferu at the end of the Middle Kingdom; and Queen Twosert, who ruled after the dynastic crisis at the end of the 19th Dynasty. In contrast, Hatshepsut ruled as a pharaoh during the golden age of Egyptian history, when Egypt ruled the East.
Recently, I was invited by Dorothea Arnold to give a lecture on Queen Hatshepsut on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition that is currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hatshepsut, which means “united with Amun in front of the nobles,” was the daughter of Thuthmosis I and Queen Ahmose. She marri
- •
Identifying Hatshepsut’s Mummy
July 2007
Upon the approval of the Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, an Egyptian archaeological mission led by Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), found Hatshepsut’s mummy inside tomb KV 60 in the Valley of the Kings on Luxor’s west bank. It is a very important and significant discovery executed by an Egyptian scientific and archeological team.
The team consisted of:
| Dr. Zahi Hawass: | Egyptologist and Head of the Scientific Mission |
| Dr. Ashraf Selim: | Professor of Radiology, Cairo University |
| Dr. Galal El-Beheri: | Professor of Orthodontics, Cairo University |
| Dr. Yehya Zakariya: | Professor of Molecular Genetics, National Research Center |
| Dr. Hani Abdel Rahman: | CT and MRI Applications Specialist with Siemens Ltd |
| Hisham El-Leithy: | Egyptologist and Assistant to Dr. Hawass |
The effort to identify the mummy of queen Hatshepsut began last year, when Dr. Hawass scientifically examined four unidentified New Kingdom royal fe
Copyright ©bandfull.pages.dev 2025