Hatshepsut (hah-CHEHP-suht) was the elder of two daughters born to the Pharaoh Thutmose I (TUHT-mohz) and his wife Ahmose (AH-mohz) during the Eighteenth Dynasty (1539-1295 B. c.) Her younger sister died in childhood, however—a frequent occurrence in ancient times, even among royalty—making Hatshepsut an only child.
Hatshepsut's name, variously rendered as Hashep-sowe, Hatasu, Hatshopsitu, Maatkare, meant “foremost of the royal ladies." When she was still a young girl, her parents married her to her half-brother Thutmose II, son of Thutmose I by a different wife. Marriage between relatives was common in
A. D. 268, a new Roman emperor refused to recognize the arrangement, but in 270, the emperor Aurelian named Vaballath the legitimate heir once again.
By then Zenobia had taken advantage of the confusion in Rome and had begun building a Palmyran empire that she intended to rule jointly with her son. Not only did she take over most of Syria but she annexed Egypt as well. However, her demand that the mint in the Syrian city of Antioch make coins with the image of herself and her son rather than that of the Roman emperor was too much for Aurelian.
In 271, Rome restored Egypt to the empire. Aurelian personally came east to deal with Zenobia. There ensued an extraordinary battle of wits and wills between the two, along with a series of bloody conflicts between their armies. In the end, however, the sheer power of Rome won. Zenobia was paraded through the streets of Rome, a captured princess weighted down with impossibly heavy gold and jewels.
There is a legend that Zenobia was not executed but married a Roman senator and lived out her days in comfort. Whether or not this is so, it is certain that she was an extraordinary woman. Though she claimed relation to Cleopatra, whose ancestry was Greek, most likely she was an Arab. She spoke five languages. Those who had seen her attested to her great beauty. However, a Roman historian wrote, "Such was her continence, it is said, that she would not know her own husband save for the purpose of conception."
Egypt. In the case of Thutmose II, it strengthened his claim on the throne since he, unlike Hatshepsut, did not have two royal parents.
When Thutmose II took the throne, Hatshepsut had no reason to believe she would ever rule. Soon after becoming his queen, she had ordered the construction of a tomb for herself. This was an important act for a monarch in Egypt, where people believed that after death, they returned to live on Earth. She never finished construction on the tomb, but an inscription listing her titles says a great deal about an Egyptian queen's place in the shadow of men: “king's daughter, king's sister, wife of the god, great wife of the king."
World History
