The fifty-four-year reign of Thutmose III began in his early childhood with Hatshepsut, his aunt and stepmother, acting as regent. According to Ineni, whose funerary ‘autobiography’ ended just before Hatshepsut became ruler: ‘his [Thutmose Il’s] son was set in his place as king of the Two Lands upon the throne of him who engendered him. His sister, the god’s wife Hatshepsut, executed the affairs of the Two Lands according to her counsels. Egypt worked for her, head bowed, the excellent seed of the god, who came forth from him... ’. Ahmose Pennekhbet’s inscription similarly refers to Hatshepsut’s regency in unabashed terms, not only describing her as god’s wife but also calling her Maatkara, which was her chosen throne name (prenomen).
It has been argued that Hatshepsut saw herself as Thutmose I’s heir even before her father died, thus implying that the dating of Thutmose Ill’s rule may have applied to her own reign as much as to the child king’s. It is also possible that she capitalized on the role of‘god’s wife of Amun’, its economic holdings, and its connection to the family of Ahmose-Nefertari (possibly Hatshepsut’s own genealogical link, through her mother, Ahmose) in order to support her regency in a manner similar to her female predecessors, Ahhotep and Ahmose-Nefertari. She also appears to have been preparing Nefrura for the same type of role.
However, once Hatshepsut had given herself a throne name and begun to transform herself publicly into a king, she can have had only one certain earlier model to follow: Sobekkara Sobekneferu (1777-1773 Bc), the woman who ruled at the end of the 12th Dynasty (see Chapter 7). Hatshepsut did not attempt to legitimize her reign by claiming to have ruled with or for her husband Thutmose II. Instead she emphasized her blood line, and in the period before she had taken a throne name the royal steward Senenmut left an inscription at Aswan (commemorating the quarrying of her first obelisks), naming her as: ‘king’s daughter, king’s sister, god’s wife, great royal wife Hatshepsut’. At Deir el-Bahri, scenes and texts of Hatshepsut claim that Thutmose I had proclaimed her as heir before his death, and that Ahmose had been chosen by Amun to bear the new divine ruler. Hatshepsut had the same pure genealogy as Ahmose-Nefertari, Ahhotep, and Sobekneferu. The latter was never a queen: she was a king’s daughter, whose embodiment of the pure family line was apparently sufficient to maintain her rule as pharaoh. Hatshepsut must have felt she embodied the same aspects, and for nearly twenty years she was correct.
Her only known offspring (by Thutmose II) was Nefrura, who was frequently described as ‘king’s daughter’ and ‘god’s wife’, and also, more than once, ‘mistress of the two lands’ and ‘lady of Upper and Lower Egypt’. The debate continues as to whether she was wife to Thutmose III during the co-regency period, but she did appear as god’s wife with him as late as the twenty-second or twenty-third year of his reign. At some time Thutmose III replaced her name with that of Sitiah, whom he married after his sole rule began. If Nefrura was ever ‘king’s great wife’ to Thutmose III, the king must have ended the formal relationship soon after Hatshepsut’s disappearance in the twentieth or twenty-first year of his reign. Children born to Nefrura are not explicitly identified, although the prince Amenemhat has been suggested as her son on purely circumstantial grounds.
World History
