Ancient History -- with Women!

Many of the women mentioned below are fairly well known in intellectual circles, but you don't find them in American high school history books. That's why we wrote this article. The twelve women we have picked out of the crowd of ignored female figures in ancient history do not have perfect characters, and are not always admirable. Some of them may have assassinated a relative to gain their position. Some were disloyal, or stupid, and that's the way it should be. They were the children of their times, and assassination appears to be very common in ancient circles of command. And as for the question of disloyalty, well, that depends on who wrote the history book, doesn't it? We needn't even discuss stupidity. People in ancient history don't have a market on it.

died young, she was left with a half-brother, Thutmose II. Thutmose died young, and Hatshepsut was already in a position of leadership before this happened. Hatshepsut had no sons, and the son of Thutmose II and a palace concubine, still a small boy, became Thutmose III. Hatshepsut became the Regent (though there was no title for this position).

Two years later, Hatshepsut assumed the throne, supposedly at the `request' of the King of the Gods, Amon-Re. From that point she was interchangeably referred to by Egyptian scribes with both male and female pronouns. There are surviving statues of Hatshepsut; the two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art show her dressed as a woman in one, and as a man in the other -- but she has a feminine body in both. When she died, she had two tombs and two sarcophagi; one for a king and one for a queen. She held the throne for twenty years, and under her reign Egypt prospered. There were no wars involving Egypt during this period; she expanded trade and built extensively.