The Woman Who Would Be King by Kara Cooney Page B

who fed him, and who incited him to sexual rebirth. This new, female kingship was nothing if not theological, and Hatshepsut’s interpretations of its difference tapped into the elemental powers present in the Egyptian people’s lives, the forces that dispel darkness, warm the skin, flood the earth, and allow the crops to grow. Her pious connection to Amen-Re allowed access to bothmasculine and feminine power, to both visible and hidden authority, unlike any monarch that had come before.
    Hatshepsut’s royal transformation was a success. She had begun her transition years before, culminating with the coronation when everyone gathered in the temple to see her blessed by the gods. Now, in the palace throne room, she presented her people with a more intimate, but still ceremonial, view of her alteration. They could see her plainly now that she was removed from the mysterious temple atmosphere filled with the haze of incense, burnt offerings, and the sharp angles of the rising or setting sun’s rays. Here in the palace there were no lengthy ritual activities that shielded the object of veneration from the viewing audience’s eyes. Within the confines of the throne room, one could address and speak to the king, assuming one used the correct formalities and conventions. Some officials of high rank were allowed even more intimate conversation, to the extent that they could disagree with the royal sovereign if the proper decorum was observed. After the overwrought ritual weight of the coronation, it was probably a relief to Hatshepsut and her officials to get down to the brass tacks of politics and finance.
    At her first royal “sitting,” the transformed Hatshepsut graced her throne in the presence of the most elite officials, priests, and courtiers. The gilded chair was placed upon a dais that made her higher than anyone standing in the audience hall; it may have been situated within a gilded pavilion that surrounded her person with divine imagery of ancestor kings. She wore one of the many fabulous crowns in her arsenal and perhaps clutched her royal scepters. This was a woman who had grown up with court protocol and its accoutrements, and even in her unprecedented position as king, it is likely that she felt familiar not only with the weight of her crown and the heft of the religious instruments but also with the way she should hold her body and watch her audience with purpose.
    She may have announced some of her royal policies and plans to her elites here for the first time. This formal moment would have been necessary for a legitimization of her new position, so that everyone could see, with their own eyes, what she had become and how she would behave among them. The Egyptians excelled in providing visual trappings thatrecast a normal human as an extraordinary, divinized being. Everything about this scene—from the throne and its height to the pavilion and its richness, to her crowns, kilts, sandals, and eye makeup, to the strange confluence of masculine royal regalia on an elite woman—separated her from them, making her seem superhuman and beyond their criticism.
    Hatshepsut had already spent years sitting in this very room, discussing strategies with her generals, conferring over the grain tax for a specific region, or reviewing options for dealing with a troublesome new governor in the delta. But now her clothing and regalia had changed. Her names were altered and enhanced. Her place on the dais was superior. Yet these were only surface modifications. In the minds of the ancient Egyptians who served her, her very person had been revealed as a living god, a being that now had one-to-one contact with the mind of Amen. With those crowns now upon her head, it is probable that most of her officials would have treated her differently than they had before.
    And the changes rippled through the court as her coronation transformed the stations of those around her. Some moved down, like Thutmose III, demoted to a junior king;