Our second trip to the de Young

This time I wanted to see the special Hatshepsut exhibit. Mark and I complained again about the stairway, but it was worth it, because the exhibit was really cool. This was an Egyptian woman who ruled as *king* alongside her co-regent—her nephew and stepson, Thutmose III—in the 1400s B.C. At first she ruled in his stead, when he was too young to take the throne, and then when he was an adult, instead of giving up power, she ruled alongside him as co-king. The Egyptologists believe she was the dominant partner, too. In the statue representations of her, she is shown as both a man and a woman, wearing traditional garb associated with each sex, in different representations. It is not known whether Thutmose III accepted this arrangement with contentment or not (some of the material I read said he might have had her assassinated finally). Twenty years after her death, Thutmose had a lot of the statues and images of her erased or defaced! Historians thought for awhile that this was an indication of his resentment of her usurping his role, but why wait 20 years? Also, he didn’t try to eliminate all representations of her—just the ones where she’s shown as a king, rather than a queen. The newer theory is that Thutmose didn’t resent her personally, but rather was trying to ensure the male line of kings for his son, Amenhotep II. He was trying to rewrite the historical record so as to make the line of male kings seem to go seamlessly from Thutmose to Thutmose, obliterating the memory of a woman having ever assumed those powers.

By the way, Thutmose III was a short, warlike king who was later called by historians “the Napoleon of Egypt.” We also went up in the tower, which has a panoramic view of the city. You should go up in the tower, whoever you are, you San Franciscan. Unless you are terrified of heights, of course.