ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS KARA COONEY October 29, 2022 QUEENS OF EGYPT: When Women Ruled the World Kara Cooney National Geographic Special Magazine, 2018 (96 pages) NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SPECIAL MAGAZINE OUTLINE Note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages INTRODUCTION — "Why women do not rule the world: women were hardly ever allowed into positions of real formal authority during the 3,000 years of the Ancient Egyptian Empire. In the end, a queen's power was a short-term illusion each time it occurred." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from the Introduction, 4-9) "In one place on our planet thousands of years ago, against all the odds of the male-dominated system in which they lived, women ruled repeatedly with formal, unadulterated power. Ancient Egypt is an anomaly as the only land that consistently called upon the rule of women to keep its regime in working order, safe from discord, and on the surest possible footing — particularly when a crisis was under way. Most of these female pharaohs ruled as Egyptian 'god-kings incarnate,' not just as mere power behind a man on the throne." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from the Introduction, 4) "Six of them — Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret and Cleopatra — climbed the highest and wielded the most significant power, not as manipulators of their menfolk, but as heads of state. Each started as a queen — a sexual vessel of their king — but each became the chief decision-maker, and five of them served as king outright. Though each woman must have had the gravitas, skill, intelligence, and intuition to rule, each was also put in power by an Egyptian system that needed her ruling authority." (4) "But this story conceals some darker twists and turns. These Egyptian women were power brokers, to be sure: educated for complex tasks and supreme leadership... They were allowed into positions of real and formal authority, but in the end their power was a short-term illusion each time it occurred. These female kings were placeholders for the rightful masculine leaders who were too old or too young to rule or had not been born yet. Often, the men who came after them erased or omitted their names from the formal 'king lists' of monarchs created by the royal temple." (4-5) "To understand this strange and contradictory tale of unadulterated female power wielded by poorly remembered women over an extraordinary 3,000-year run of ups and downs, let us turn to the women themselves." (5) "Merneith, one of the earliest embodiments of female power from ancient Egypt, ruled during the mid-1st dynasty (3000-2890 BCE), at the dawn of the Egyptian nation-state, when kingship was new and brutal. She never took on a formal position, but she appeared in 'king lists' as the person who ruled on behalf of a son, Den, who was thrust into the position of king far too young." (5) "Eleven dynasties later, Neferusobek of the 12th dynasty (1985-1773 BCE) gave structure to the power Merneith had held only through the authority of the men and boys around her. She was the first woman who took the Egyptian kingship as her formal title. She ruled alone for about four years and achieved what Merneith could not." (5) "Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty (1550-1295 BCE) created the most powerful female kingship Egypt had ever seen. Hers was a reign marked by accomplishment, clever strategizing, empire building, and prosperity. Her husband and half brother, Thutmose II, died young, leaving the crown without an heir, making her kingship possible. Without a son to keep her legacy intact, Hatshepsut’s name was removed from the religious and historic record, her images scratched away, her statues smashed to pieces. Her rule was seen as a threat to the men who came after her—the very men she had personally placed into positions of power." (pages 5 and 6) "A century later, Nefertiti, near the end of the 18th dynasty, would have heard stories of the audacious Hatshepsut. Nefertiti had to try a different tactic to attain power, one that defended and shielded not only her femininity but also her identity. It is no surprise that Egyptologists still argue about whether Nefertiti achieved the kingship at all. She effectively did it in disguise, setting Egypt on a path to recovery after the great turmoil of the Amarna period. Nefertiti is remembered to us as a great beauty, a chiseled face of loveliness and sensual desire. But she may have been much more if recent investigations are correct." (6) "During the 19th dynasty (1295-1186 BCE), another woman — Tawosret — found access to power through her husband, an unrelated royal heir, and brutal civil unrest. When she became king, Tawosret took a road neither Hatshepsut nor Nefertiti had dared tread upon. She ascended the throne unprotected by father or husband or son. Tawosret boldly stood alone as sovereign, eschewing secret identities, new names, or masculinization. Her tomb in the Valley of the Kings shows her as a female king, but that sepulcher would be taken over by the very same man who had her violently removed from power. After Tawosret, female power lay dormant in Egypt for a thousand years." (6) "In a land where women had repeatedly risen to the top, achieving ever greater heights, Egypt fell to foreign empires, obstructing the female authority that kept the people of the Nile protected when everything fell apart. Then Cleopatra VII entered the scene. She almost does not belong on this list of ancient Egyptian queens, because she was a member of a Macedonian Greek ruling family, the Ptolemaic dynasty, whose home rule was reestablished in Egypt from 332 BCE to 3O BCE. However, she too ruled Egypt, and likely knew of the great women who had sat on Egypt’s throne before her. Cleopatra was a master tactician who manipulated her relationships to the benefit of Egypt and her personal ambitions." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from Introduction, 7) "Egypt’s political system allowed these women to rule — in fact, demanded that they step into the arena of power. I will explain why this happened by examining the strategy of each queen." "Most of the women in this book achieved power not through violence but through political consensus." "As a rule, the women recognized that their position was fragile. Egyptian female rulers understood the need to constantly shore up their power, rather than beat their chests and bang the war drums. This rendered them essential in moments of crisis. Egyptian society elevated its queens, allowing them to rise up to the top precisely because a woman usually does not resort to military conquest and fractious aggression." (7) "This does not presume that Egyptian female rulers were always peaceful. For example, Hatshepsut ordered brutal crackdowns on Kush and Tawosret probably played a part in the assassination of a chancellor and maybe even a king. But, in general, these female leaders did not tend to foment war against their own. Cleopatra was a notable exception, but when she raised her army, it was against a brother who was trying to kill her. It was not against the Egyptian leadership structure itself. Overall, these women were prudent choices for a circumspect (cautious) continuation of a traditional patriarchal male-centered hereditary monarchy. When no male kings were biologically available the potential conflict among the Egyptian royal elites over the prescribed (authorized) gender-based leadership roles would have threatened severe chaos to the traditional leadership model. All hope for continuity of the male-dominated leadership system would have been lost without the female 'pharaoh-kings'." (7) "A long time ago, in a land far, far away, women called the shots with a regularity that stuns and confuses historians. Egypt fostered female ambition, knowing it would set its people on a cautious and steady course. Let us look at how these women were able to launch themselves to the pinnacle of their society." (7) 1) MERNEITH — Queen of blood (10-19) [1] TRADITION (12-17) [2] THE ABYDOS NECROPOLIS (16-17) [2] LEGACY (18-19) CONCLUSION = Legacy = "King Den was Merneith’s greatest legacy. She set up her son to rule at the dynasty’s apex. He grew into his reign with grace and skill. He was the first to use the title King of Upper and Lower Egypt, something every king after him would copy. His tomb preserves imagery of him defeating enemies of western Asia, probably on a campaign in the Levant, labeled as The First Smiting of the East, an action Egypt’s later warrior-kings, like Thutmose Ill, another young king empowered by a female regent, would mimic... His reign is believed to have been 42 years in length, including Merneith’s regency, an astonishing amount of time to establish his control over the farthest reaches beyond Egypt, extending the borders farther than any previous king. He was both a warrior and a pious chief priest, reigning during prosperous times. While Merneith was Egypt’s trailblazer, it was her feminine rule that saved Egypt’s traditional male-dominant kingship leadership strategy for thousands of years." "Ultimately, the memory of Merneith herself would be short-lived. She does appear on a 'king list' found in the tomb of her son, but on inscriptions from the last part of the 1st dynasty in the tomb of Qa’a, one of Den’s successors, there is no longer any mention of Merneith... Like so many Egyptian royal women who stepped into decision-making power, Merneith was used by a patriarchal authoritarian system when it was expedient, because her agenda as royal daughter, wife, and mother demanded prudent behavior and not risky action. She was asked to lead the country and its people and was then discarded from the annals of history. But she ruled, nonetheless! The next queens of Egypt would see their power reified (reinforced) by taking the male title of 'king'." (Paraphrased by webmaster from Legacy section, 18-19) Horrors and Treasures = "Merneith’s tomb contained horrors as well as treasures. Grisly trenches surrounded the tomb which were filled with the dead, canals in the sand lined with mudbricks and separated by single brick walls. Thus, it was believed that all the sacrificial victims would have a room of their own in the next life. Forty-one skeletons were uncovered at Merneith’s burial site, surrounding and protecting the body of their dead former 'pharaoh-king.' Another 79 bodies were deposited around her funerary enclosure." "Like other rulers of her time, Merneith had a second tomb in the North, near the capital, Memphis. It contained just a few dozen sacrificial graves. Here she received a 'solar boat burial,' to ferry her along the Milky Way to the Northern Imperishable Stars, where the kings dwelled, or to join the circuit of the sun on his east-west route. This was no small honor for a queen-regent. It was provided almost certainly by her son and it placed her on par with every male ruler in the necropolis." "As it happened, Merneith’s end did not require a selection, or any kind of political statement. Thus, fewer people in total, particularly fewer young and valuable members of society, were asked to die. Not only did a woman’s rule protect Egypt’s royal lineage at a vulnerable time, but it also lessened the brutal impact of 'sacrificial burial' on the people of Ancient Egypt." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from The Abydos Necropolis section, 16-17) 2) NEFERUSOBEK — Last woman standing (20-31) [1] THE ROYAL HAREM (22-25) [2] THE FIRST FEMALE KING (26-27) [3] BUILDING HOPE (28-31) CONCLUSION = [1] Temple at Hawara = "To uphold her father’s dynasty and further legitimize her kingship, Neferusobek ordered her father’s pyramid complex completed. She also took an unprecedented step and ordered her father deified within his temple spaces. Although all kings were considered divine, and all dead kings had a greater divinity among the company of ancestor kings, Neferusobek went a step further and created special cult spaces for the worship of her father as a god at his temple at Hawara. She set aside extensive lands whose income of grain and flax and livestock would support an ongoing cult, paying priests an annual salary to regularly make offerings to the statues of the dead king." [2] The Low Nile = "The Nile was ancient Egypt’s life force, and usually this great water resource made things extraordinarily easy for its people. Egypt looked first and always to the Nile, and not to the Red Sea or the Mediterranean. Every winter the monsoons would start over south-central Asia and then sweep over to the Ethiopian Highlands, pelting the lands with heavy rains. Egyptians relied on sufficient annual flooding of the Nile River for their crops to thrive. Typically, the flooding began in late spring, and after the waters receded, furrows could be plowed and planted. The results were usually fast and glorious: tall, ripe stalks of grain filled with fat, juicy kernels. But during Neferusobek’s third year as king, the watery inundations were not nearly adequate enough. As scarcity set in, failed crops, famine, starvation, and collapse for her people and maybe even militarized competition among provincial landowners meant that Egypt was on the brink of disaster." "Neferusobek must have felt it was her responsibility to get Egypt back on course. It was not Neferusobek’s fate to be blessed with an easy kingship. She was only on the throne because of her dynasty’s inability to produce a male heir, but she now had to deal with intolerable famine as well. I assume that she tapped her rich grain stores and opened state-controlled bins to feed hungry Egyptians by using the great wealth amassed from years of plenty. Neferusobek, a learned woman, would have known the poems of suffering in the absence of strong government, and now she was herself living through what she had read about as a child --- the grief, famine, low Nile, infighting, and anxiety of the royal social elites. Meanwhile, everyone likely talked and schemed about the fact that Neferusobek was the last of her family—and that a change in dynasty was soon to come. And then it happened, much sooner than expected. After only three years, 10 months, and 24 days, according to the Turin 'king list,' Neferusobek’s reign came to an abrupt conclusion. With her death came the end of one of Egypt’s greatest ruling families." (30-31) [3] Ruling Unopposed = "How Neferusobek died remains an open question. Some Egyptologists have proposed that she met an untimely end, murdered for taking the kingship that did not rightfully belong to a woman. But the fact that she took the sovereignty and ruled unopposed for years, finishing the temple of her father, suggests otherwise. Even if she could produce no sons, Neferusobek was the mechanism by which the social elites could fashion a solution to their power vacuum, because a woman rules differently from a man! And the Egyptians, in their own way, thanked Neferusobek for what she had done for them: she was preserved in most of the king lists. She was not considered heretical or undeserving because of her sex. She protected her land in a time of distress, and for that she was honored." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from Building Hope section, 31) 3) HATSHEPSUT — Queen of public relations (32-49) [1] THE THEBAN ROYAL FAMILY (34-37) [2] THE CHOSEN LEADER (38-41) [3] THE ROLE OF GENDER (42-45) [4] CROWNING ACHIEVEMENTS (46-49) CONCLUSION = [1] Trading Expeditions = "The fact that Hatshepsut was a woman did not make her any more of a pacifist, it seems, not with legions of new officials on the payroll. And so, more than once she brought her army south and terrorized Nubia and Kush, ensuring that new spoils of war moved into Egypt and that gold mines operated at full capacity. It probably did not hurt that foreign kings to the north of Egypt, in the Levant, heard about these successful campaigns and felt cowed enough to keep some tribute payments coming into Egypt. This was Hatshepsut’s kingship: a delicately balanced political achievement for a woman dependent upon her nobility’s cooperation and co-option. Only great wealth could have allowed such unusual governing schemes. Hatshepsut excelled at spending Egypt’s lavish earnings. But it seems that to maintain her authority and to continually prove she was the chosen monarch of Egypt, she still needed to make a big splash with the social elites. She organized a trading expedition to the land of Punt, a semi-mythical place so far away that the prospects must have excited her." (46) "When men returned successfully from the sub-Saharan land, probably somewhere near modern-day Eritrea along the Red Sea coast, they came laden with incense, such as frankincense and myrrh, and the Egyptian people rejoiced. Stories about the fat and misshapen queen of Punt were published and distributed for elite consumption, along with images of the strange flora and fauna the Egyptians recorded along the journey. This was visual proof that the trip really had taken place. Hatshepsut was rewarded with the respect of her people for pulling off one of the most daring feats an Egyptian king could perform. It was a return voyage from a legendary land of priceless aromas and ebony hardwood trees. Hatshepsut even commissioned the expedition with the blessing of the 'Amun oracle,' setting up the event with no option but to accept it as though it were a preordained success." (Paraphrased slightly by webmaster from Crowning Achievements section, 48) [2] The Temple of Millions of Years = "Hatshepsut's political success notwithstanding, her most enduring achievement may be an architectural one — the construction of a traditional, yet unique temple complex, in the desert on the west bank of the Nile It is nestled into a great half-moon bay of cliffs sacred to the goddess Hathor. The selection of the site smacked of great confidence or extraordinary insecurity, or maybe both. Hatshepsut picked the most visible, most sacred, most beautiful place in southern Egypt for her Temple of Millions of Years, a space where her elite could congregate and consume the achievements she had created during her kingship. More important, the site was built so that her people could offer gifts to her once she had died and had become a great god in the heavens herself. Here, she published in detail her chosen biographical tales. The first story: how her mother was visited by the god Amun, who impregnated the queen Ahmes with his sacred essence, producing the miracle baby Hatshepsut, who against all odds would go on to become the most powerful female king in ancient history." (49) [3] A Powerful Queen = "If performed traditionally, as the gods would expect, good rule is abstract, something another leader could easily take credit for as his own. Indeed, Hatshepsut’s own nephew and co-king would later erase her figures and texts and reassign credit to his father or grandfather for much of what she had done. Even though Hatshepsut represents the most powerful of all the Egyptian queens, few today can even pronounce her name. She presents the historian with a different challenge. She has had to be excavated and revived by Egyptologists. She has been saved from erasure imposed on her by the men who came after her. Hatshepsut's own nephew would later erase her figures and texts and reassign credit to his father or grandfather for much of what she had done." (49) 4) NEFERTITI — More than just a pretty face (50-65) [1] NEFERTITI AND AMENHOTEP IV (52-55) [2] THE HORIZON OF ATEN (56-57) [3] A NUCLEAR FAMILY (38-39) [4] ANKHKHEPERURE/SMENKHKARE (64-65) CONCLUSION = The New Co-King = "After Year 12, a new co-king was pictured alongside Akhenaten, named Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten and now identified by most historians as Nefertiti herself. She had already been given the name Neferneferuaten by her husband, and now she abandoned Nefertiti in favor of the throne name of a king. After all, Akhenaten had no one else to trust but his queen to keep his religious experiment going. He needed her completely empowered alongside him as king. Nefertiti’s new name was now Ankhkheperure, meaning the Manifestations of Re are Alive. Because Akhenaten had given her the additional name of Neferneferuaten in Year 5, he must have reinvented her as his co-king, and in this new guise, she had turned away, or been made to turn away, from all ties to her birth family or identity." "For Akhenaten to share power with a woman meant he must have felt vulnerable in some way, in need of a partner who could not easily turn on him. He also needed the time and space to form and finesse his Aten religion. Akhenaten was not utilizing the co-kingship to ensure that his dynasty continued into the future, as every other king before him had done; he was instead politically securing it to his wife. Indeed, there is no evidence that he had any sons born to Nefertiti from which to choose. Nefertiti had been elevated to a place beyond any of the queens thus far, even Hatshepsut. And as the younger monarch, the legacy of this reign would fall to Nefertiti after the king’s death. She was his trusted ally, ostensibly meant to carry out his theological vision. Nefertiti was the member of the kingly pair who went out into the world to see to the administration of Egypt, while Akhenaten closeted himself away in his sacred city, obsessing over his faith. But she was perhaps also someone the officials could rely on to make commonsense decisions." (65) 5) TAWOSRE — The survivor (66-77) [1] TAWOSRET'S EGYPT (68-71) [2] GOD'S WIFE OF AMUN (72-75) [3] A DEFENSIVE STAND (76-77) CONCLUSION = A King's Ambition = "Tawosret was scrappy and brave, able to take great risks and to capitalize on her efforts. But, despite all that, her kingship was short. Little of substance was accomplished during her reign. Little was built. Her imagery was never masculinized like Hatshepsut’s because she had no male counterpart who was growing older and stronger to match and no long kingship to equal. She showed herself, like Neferusobek before her, as a woman with the elements of kingship layered upon her feminine person. She never tried to become the masculinized king of her people. She did not have enough time, and it is also likely that she did not have enough political support to show herself this way." "From the beginning, Tawosret's power was exercised from a defensive stance. But she accomplished what no Egyptian woman before her could: She took the kingship out of her own ambition. Tawosret would have no legacy, no children. The next king would not be her son. Instead, we see a continuation of the power of that mighty and overly large extended family of Ramses the Great." [67) 6) CLEOPATRA — Drama queen (78-95) [1] PTOLEMAIC LIFE (80-83) [2] JOINT RULERS (84-85) [3] CLEOPATRA AND CAESAR (86-87) [4] CLEOPATRA'S ALEXANDRIA (88-89) [5] LOVE AND POLITICS (90-93) CONCLUSION = [There is slight paraphrasing by webmaster to describe the six exemplary female pharaohs described in the following section.] "After Tawosret, there was no female king until more than a thousand years later. And when she does appear, she almost does not belong on this list of ancient Egyptian queens. She was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was a Macedonian Greek ruling family whose home rule was reestablished in Egypt from 332 BCE to 3O BCE, This dynasty embraced the system of divine kingship with open arms." "Cleopatra, who is officially known as Cleopatra VII by historians, was the first female ruler of Egypt in more than a century. She nearly had it all since her accomplishments as the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom were many. She seized power in Egypt as it was about to be conquered ('absorbed') by the Roman Empire. And she influenced ('manipulated') Egyptian statesmen to fight against complete Roman domination." "Cleopatra is the only woman in this National Geographic Special Magazine who expanded her dynasty using her own powerful leadership abilities. She placed herself at the center of the wheel of power as the producer of future kings. She is the only one to attempt to accomplish succession via her own children, exactly as a man would. Thus she combined brilliant leadership with a productive womb, since she was impregnated by powerful men to whom she was never subservient as was customery for a royal wife." The first Roman warlord chosen by Cleopatra was Julius Caesar who was assassinated by his fellow Romans for taking too much power. The second was Mark Antony, who overreached in his disastrous attempts to take vast lands in Central Asia. If these warriors had lived longer and thrived, Cleopatra would have expanded her power and would be remembered very differently today as a shrewd politician and supremely successful executive decision-maker." (92-93) ILLUSTRATION CREDITS (96) AUTHOR NOTES, SUMMARY, AND ARTICLE DESCRIPTION AUTHOR NOTES = Dr, Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney is Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA and chair of its Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Her ongoing academic work focuses on death preparations, social competition, and gender studies. Cooney specializes in craft production and coffin reuse --- primarily studying the 19th to 21st dynasties. However, she is increasingly engaged in studying the economies and politics of the ancient world and making comparisons with the worldwide conventional male dominated government leadership paradigms. Cooney earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. Her book, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, was released in 2018. Her research investigates the socioeconomic and political turmoil that plagued the period. It ultimately led to studying funerary and burial practices in ancient Egypt. This project took her around the world over the span of six years to study and document nearly 300 coffins. They included those in collections in Cairo, London, Paris, Berlin, and Vatican City. Her book about coffin reuse, Recycling for Death, is scheduled to appear in the future. She appeared as a lead expert in the popular Discovery Channel special The Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen and produced and wrote Discovery's film Out of Egypt. She is the author of three books: Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World (2021), When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt (2018), and The Woman Who Would be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt (2014). Cooney lives in Los Angeles, California. SUMMARY = The content of this National Geographic Special Magazine provides an excellent summary of Kara Cooney's previously published book, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt (2018), including: Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret and Cleopatra. It features spectacular pictures of temple and monument art from Ancient Egypt and 19th century European artists who depicted events from Ancient Egyptian History during the excavations in Egypt during the 1800s. ARTICLE DESCRIPTION = "In one place on our planet thousands of years ago, against all the odds of the male-dominated system in which they lived, women ruled repeatedly with formal, unadulterated power. Ancient Egypt is an anomaly as the only land that consistently called upon the rule of women to keep its regime in working order, safe from discord, and on the surest possible footing — particularly when a crisis was under way. Most of these women ruled as Egyptian 'god-kings' incarnate, not as the mere power behind a man on the throne." (From the Introduction, 4) "Six of them climbed the highest and wielded the most significant power, not as manipulators of their menfolk, but as heads of state. Each started as a queen — a sexual vessel of their king — but each became the chief decision-maker, and five of them served as king outright. Though each woman must have had the gravitas, skill, intelligence, and intuition to rule, each was also put in power by an Egyptian system that needed her ruling authority." (From the Introduction, 4) "But this story conceals some darker twists and turns. These Egyptian women were power brokers, to be sure: educated for complex tasks and supreme leadership... They were allowed into positions of real and formal authority, but in the end their power was a short-term illusion each time it occurred. These female kings were placeholders for the rightful masculine leaders who were too old or too young to rule or had not been born yet." (From the Introduction, 4) RECOMMENDED BY WEBMASTER: You can re-read this summary according to a reinforcement schedule, such as a few hours later and a few days later and then several times in the next week or two. This strategy can help you take advantage of the power of the spaced-repetition method of memorization. Such deep introspection can strengthen your natural willpower and change your adaptive self-identity to increase your self-esteem. REMEMBER ALWAYS: You are your adaptable memory! Click or Tap Star to: RETURN TO THE HUMANIST HUB OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS ALPHABETICAL BRAIN® VOCABULARY produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas®