Scarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife Hatshepsut

Scarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife Hatshepsut

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This scarab was found in one of the foundation deposits located along the front of the lower court of Hatshepsut's funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri. The inscription on the base appears to be missing a hieroglyph. It reads: the wife, Hatshepsut. It probably should have read either: The God's Wife, Hatshepsut, or The King's Wife (queen), Hatshepsut. In the late Seventeenth early Eighteenth Dynasties, the title God's Wife was held by the principal queen or the queen mother. Hatshepsut inherited the title while she served as principal queen of her half-brother, Thutmose II. Later, shortly after she took on the titles of king, Hatshepsut passed the title on to her daughter, Neferure (see scarab 27.3.325). Two scarabs from Hatshepsut's foundation deposits (27.3.194) have an unusual version of one of the hieroglyphs. The woman seated on the chair is represented perching on the seat with her knees drawn up in front of her instead of seated in a conventional fashion with her legs down (In most examples of this hieroglyph, the woman's legs merge with the front leg of the chair - see 27.3.192).

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Scarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife HatshepsutScarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife HatshepsutScarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife HatshepsutScarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife HatshepsutScarab Inscribed for the [God's] Wife Hatshepsut

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.