Lower Part of a Statue

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

There is no inscription to identify the king depicted in this seated statue. However, the fact that it was found in fragments with the smashed statues of Hatshepsut suggests that this, too, represented the female pharaoh. For more than 1500 years before Hatshepsut ascended the throne, the ideal Egyptian king had been represented as a young man in the prime of life. This ideal applied whether the ruler was an old man, a young child, or a woman. Two of Hatshepsut's statues depict her as a female ruler (29.3.2), but most of them depict her as the ideal king (30.3.1). However, this should not be taken as a sign that she was trying to fool anyone into believing she was a man. The inscriptions on the masculine statues generally included either a feminine grammatical form or her personal name, Hatshepsut, which literally means "Foremost of Noblewomen." She had also been in the public eye since childhood, first as "king's daughter" of Thutmose I, then as "king's principal wife" of her half-brother Thutmose II, then as regent to her nephew/step-son Thutmose III, and finally as senior co-ruler with the same king.

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