A Study On Female Pharaoh Hatshepsut Building Her Throne Legitimacy

Hatshepsut is a famous matriarch in the ancient Egyptian history and even the world history.Hatshepsut is the female who ruled Egypt for a long time,and moreover,the process for her to gain power seems no bloody wars or social traumas.Under the situation that the ancient Egypt generally recognized male-domination,Hatshepsut was succeeded in building her own throne legitimacy from the aspects such as religious,blood relations and images in virtue of political publicity,and ruled Egyptian Empire for more than 20 years.When she was on the throne,Egypt had a peaceful development,and flourishing buildings and trade,which lays an indelible basis for the prosperity and development of the 18 th dynasty.This paper is mainly divided into three parts:Part One,discussion about Hatshepsut building her throne legitimacy from the religious aspect.The ancient Egypt is a religious country,and religion occupies an extreme important status in the whole society.In order to build her own throne legitimacy,Hatshepsut called herself as “the daughter of God Amun”,and made up the story of her own divine birth.Meanwhile,she also made her succession ritual to the throne mythical,thus to gain the recognition form gods.Because of her close relation with God Amun,she strengthened her own worship to her “father” Amun,showing her devout beliefs to God Amun.When she was on the throne,Amun priesthood's power grew fast.In addition,she also emphasized her throne legitimacy through other gods.Because of her own female identity,she also highlighted her connection with goddesses,enhancing the worship towards Goddess Hathor and Goddess Mut,and building herself to a temporal goddess.Part Two,discussion about Hatshepsut building her throne legitimacy from the orthodoxy.First,she proved her legitimacy from blood.She gradually ignored her died husband Thutmose II,highlighted that she was thefirstborn daughter of her father Thutmose I,and made up the story of sharing governance with Thutmose I.She showed her ardently love to Thutmose I,buried herself together with her father and accepted the sacrifice together.Secondly,she followed progenitor and made up the history of she expelling the Hyksos.Meanwhile,she also actively constructed Thebes and enhanced the political and religious status of Thebes.In the end,she hired a great bustle of masons and carpenters to newly build,repair or expand lots of buildings,those buildings not only show the worship to gods but also express the appeal to life,what's more,it shows her ruling power,and it's the important means to explain her political expressions.Part Three,discussion about Hatshepsut building her own throne legitimacy from image.First,Hatshepsut gradually gave up her own female image in the aspect of appearance image,blurred her gender,and dressed up as a traditional male king,thus to make people focus on her king identity and gain the public recognition.Secondly,in the aspect of text image,she also gradually gave up her queen title.But different from appearance image,she didn't gave up the female identity in the text.Her title is always the female form of the traditional king,five king's names also used the female participle form,and adding the unique creation,it shows the unique of female pharaoh.In the end,she never forgot to build her own image in the minds of people.She didn't dismiss the pharaoh status of Thutmose III,but always showed their close relationship,thus maintaining her own legitimacy of rule.