Hatshepsut

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In 1458 B.C. Hatshepsut died (mid 40s), she was buried in the valley of the kings with her father’s sarcophagus. Thutmose III was an ambitious builder like his step mother and a great warrior, and ruled for another 30 years after her death. Thutmose wanted to erase any evidence of Hatshepsut’s reign because he wanted either to hide the fact that there was a powerful female ruler or to close the gap in the dynasty’s line of male successions, not because he disliked Hatshepsut. Since he was Hatshepsut’s co-ruler, he had all evidence of her reign (images of her on the temples and monuments she had built) destroyed. Scholars knew very little of Hatshepsut’s existence until 1822 when they read hieroglyphics on the wall of the temple. In 1903, Howard Carter, a British Archaeologist, discovered Hatshepsut’s empty sarcophagus. In 2005 a new search was launched and in 2007 a team of archaeologists discovered her mummy, which is now it is conserved in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Hatshepsut had one of the greatest influence on the development of culture in ancient Egypt. Compared to other female pharaohs and some male, Hatshepsut’s reign was longer and more successful. She led a peaceful Era and re-established trading relationships which bought great wealth to Egypt. This wealth enabled her to realise her building projects which then improved the quality of ancient Egyptian architecture. She repaired some of Egypt's most loved monuments and created new ones which added to the beautiful Egyptian culture. She was a great pharaoh because she didn’t want war and instead focused on making the New kingdom a better place.