Hatshepsut Wearing the khat Headdress

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This statue is one of only two that portray Hatshepsut as a woman. Here she is shown wearing a sheath dress and a khat–headcloth. She also wears a broad collar necklace, cuff bracelets, and wide anklets. Suspended around her neck on a string of tubular beads is the same enigmatic amulet seen on two of the colossal kneeling statues in the collection (29.3.1, 30.3.2). The seated pose indicates that Hatshepsut is the recipient of cult offerings, so the statue was probably placed in one of the chapels on the middle or upper terrace of the temple. Although represented as a woman, she is also clearly identified as ruler. Incised into the stone beneath her feet are nine bows, representing the symbolic enemies of Egypt and the inscriptions on either side of the throne record her royal titulary, but here the titles and epithets are written with feminine endings. In the text next to her right leg she is called the "Good Goddess, Lady of the Two Lands." On the other side of the throne she is the "Daughter of Re."

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art