New Kingdom, reign of Hatshepsut, 1479–1458 B.C.

This statue depicts Hatshepsut, the longest-reigning female king of ancient Egypt, shown in a pose of devotion. Despite her remarkable reign, her name was deliberately omitted from official king lists. Later rulers sought to erase her memory, ensuring that no woman could again claim the throne over Amenhotep II.

For the ancient Egyptians, the ideal king was always depicted as a young man in the prime of life, regardless of the ruler’s actual age, gender, or physical condition. This idealization allowed even an older man, a child, or a female pharaoh to be represented in the traditional form of kingship, as seen in this statue of Hatshepsut. While many of her statues present her as the ideal king, inscriptions consistently reference her feminine identity—sometimes using both masculine and feminine grammatical forms, or by including her personal name, Hatshepsut, meaning “foremost of noble women.”

This statue was one of a pair flanking a granite doorway on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri. She is shown wearing a king’s nemes headdress, a false beard, and a shendyt kilt. Her pose, with hands open and resting on the front of the kilt, is a devotional gesture first used in statues of Middle Kingdom Pharaoh Senwosret III, who lived some three centuries before Hatshepsut. Senwosret had dedicated six statues of this type in the temple of Mentuhotep II, the Middle Kingdom’s founder, located just south of Hatshepsut’s temple. Like much Egyptian art, the official sculpture of Hatshepsut’s reign drew inspiration from earlier prototypes.

Statues in prominent positions—such as this one, the sphinxes, and colossal kneeling figures—emphasize Hatshepsut as the ideal king. Others, likely placed in more private areas like the chapels on the upper terrace, depict her in a more feminine form, including a seated statue in white limestone and a granite statue portraying her as a woman.

Object Details

Period: New Kingdom
Dynasty: 18th Dynasty
Reign: Joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III
Date: circa 1479–1458 BCE
Provenance: Egypt, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Deir el-Bahri, Senenmut Quarry, MMA excavations, 1927–28