Divine Birth and Coronation Inscriptions of Hatshepsut

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The text of Hatshepsut's divine birth opens with her conception. In this first scene, the narrative describes Hatshepsut's mother, Ahmose, receiving a nocturnal visit from Amon-Re, who has taken the form of her husband in order to impregnate her. She awakes and immediately recognizes the deity, however, based on his scent; he smells sweet, like perfume from Punt. The Latin phrase coivit cum ea, literally meaning “he joined with her,” indicates that Ahmose and the god had intercourse. Amon-Re then reveals his divine majesty to Ahmose, which impresses her sufficiently for her to allow the god to be able to do “all that he desired with her.” After their union is complete, Amon-Re tells Ahmose that she will shortly give birth to a daughter who will become king. In one iconographic vignette, Ahmose is depicted as visibly pregnant before Hatshepsut is born.

The idea of divine birth had precedents in Egyptian literature. A tale recorded on the Westcar Papyrus, set during the Old Kingdom but probably dating to the Middle Kingdom, tells a similar story. In the Westcar Papyrus tale, a bored King Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty is being entertained by stories from his sons. When one of his sons introduces a magician, Khufu begs the magician to reveal his secrets. The magician holds off, telling Khufu that the secrets would be revealed to Khufu by the sons of a woman named Rededet. Rededet, the wife of the chief priest of Re (this story had happened before Amon and Re were syncretized), was impregnated in a fashion nearly identical to that of Ahmose and Amon-Re. The god, smelling of perfume, approached Rededet in the night under the guise of her husband. Hatshepsut's divine birth was also picked up by later pharaohs such as Amenhotep III, who used narratives of divine birth to assert their divinity.

In the next scene from the text, Amon calls forward the god Khnum to “make her, together with her ka, from these limbs which are in me.” He reasserts that the child Hatshepsut is his own and asks Khnum, a ram-headed potter god, to “fashion her better than all gods.” True to his profession as a potter, Khnum was often shown with a potter's wheel. In Egyptian mythology, he was said to literally create man on his wheel and place the created child into the womb of the mother.

According to the narrative, Khnum is thus responsible for the creation of Hatshepsut's ka. The Egyptians divided spiritual personhood into several distinct parts. Each person possessed a ka, a ba, and an akh. The ba and akh became most important at death and were each depicted as birds, with the akh being the spirit that is released at death and the ba being a human-headed bird that could travel back and forth between the body in the physical living world and the afterlife. The ka, on the other hand, was essentially the body's spiritual double. It could move around independently of the body and was the recipient of food offerings. The ka also played an essential role after death: The ka was the deceased's living memory. Obliterating someone's name or monuments, as Thutmose III may have tried with Hatshepsut, amounted to obliterating their ka and taking away their afterlife.

In the text, Khnum agrees to fashion the child, named Maatkare Hatshepsut (called Makere in the document). Once again this story is apocryphal: Hatshepsut adopted the name Maatkare later in life and was not given it at birth. Literally, Maatkare translates as “Maat is the ka of Re,” which also indicates that the ka of the god Re was maat, an Egyptian concept that translates as “truth, justice, and order in the world.” By associating herself with both Re and maat in her name, Hatshepsut furthers the idea that her reign is legitimate.

The baby Hatshepsut, the child Khnum fashions, and its double were all depicted as male in images that accompanied the text. However, the text itself uses feminine grammatical forms, with Khnum referring to Hatshepsut as a female as he addresses the child directly to tell her that he has fulfilled Amon-Re's wishes in making her glorious. Amon-Re, responding, is pleased with Khnum's work and with his daughter.

The next section, the coronation, continues immediately from the divine birth, suggesting that Hatshepsut saw her coronation as a necessary outgrowth of her divine birth; her right to rule was ordained since Amon-Re approached her mother in the night. The carved images that accompanied the text depicted scenes of the coronation. In the inscription, Amon-Re expresses his satisfaction with Hatshepsut and asserts her fitness to rule. He echoes the language and the phraseology used in the birth scene, such as repeatedly stressing her dominion over the entire land, and this textual similarity promotes continuity between the two inscriptions.

A trip that Hatshepsut is alleged to have taken is narrated in the next section of the text. As the daughter of a pharaoh, this trip is one that likely would have been taken by a woman of her status. However, it is unknown whether this is a true narration of actual events or a continuation of the mythology surrounding her birth and coronation. The purpose of its inclusion in this text, however, is to suggest that her right to rule had been acknowledged and accepted even during her childhood, which again promotes the idea that she is a fit ruler and a worthy heir to the throne.

Throughout the text, Hatshepsut's divinity is stressed. In ancient Egypt, the office of the kingship was divine. This meant that the pharaoh, while recognized to be mortal, accepted a position that bestowed upon him quasi-divinity. He was thus both man and god, and after his death he would become wholly divine and take his place in the pantheon of Egyptian deities. By describing this trip in terms that continually reference the ways in which Hatshepsut is like a god, the text is suggesting that at every point throughout her life Hatshepsut has been recognized as a pharaoh-to-be.

The trip also has special geographic significance. Although Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs lived in and ruled from Thebes, in the southern part of Egypt, the traditional capital of Egypt was in the north, at Memphis. Ancient Egypt was divided into two major regions, Upper Egypt (in the south, reversed from our expectations because of the flow of the Nile from south to north) and Lower Egypt (in the north). The country had not always been united, and keeping the two halves of the country united was a major role of the pharaoh. Even in times of peace, the duality between Upper and Lower Egypt was an important part of the pharaonic iconography. The pharaoh wore a dual crown that combined the individual crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. He often sat on a throne that depicted Seth (called “Set” in the document) and Horus, the emblematic gods of Upper and Lower Egypt, respectively, as they tied papyrus and lotus plants representing the two kingdoms around the hieroglyph for the verb meaning “uniting.”

As the parade of gods, including Hathor, Amon, Atum, Khnum, and “all the gods that are in Thebes” welcome Hatshepsut during her travels, they are accepting her into their ranks—a status uniquely accorded to the pharaoh. The gods speak to her, ostensibly still a child, telling her in the future tense what she will do during her reign: “set [the land] in order,” defeat Egypt's traditional enemies (the Tehenu, the Troglodytes/East Africans, and the chiefs of Retenu), and give offerings in Thebes with Amon-Re.

The acts of the coronation itself are recorded in the next chapter. The crowns are placed upon her head, first the red crown of Lower Egypt and then the white crown of Upper Egypt, creating the “double crown” of both lands. Each of three important gods is present to witness and confirm her coronation: Amon-Re, her father and the head of the pantheon; Atum, the creator god; and Thoth, the god of wisdom and of writing, who records the scene. The iconography is not fully preserved here, and it is likely that other gods would have been depicted as present as well.

The coronation is said by the text to have taken place on New Year's Day in order to bring the best fortune upon the event and Hatshepsut's reign. Her father is said to have chosen this day; again, this is apocryphal. Although Thutmose I supported the advancement of Hatshepsut's career, at least through an advantageous marriage that set her up as the king's wife upon his death, there is no evidence to suggest that Thutmose I recognized Hatshepsut as his successor.

In the next paragraph, Hatshepsut's father, Thutmose I, gives her the double crown with an invocation of his pride and her worthiness, proclaiming (again in the future tense) his expectations of her reign: that she will “be powerful in the Two Lands,” fight against Egypt's enemies, and wear the crown. In other words, she will remain pharaoh and have a successful reign. He calls forth his courtiers to make the coronation official in front of an audience, and stresses that she is his chosen successor. Thus, according to the inscription, not only is Hatshepsut divinely born, an indication of her fitness as pharaoh, but she has also been selected by a previous pharaoh. His address to his court is as much of an endorsement of Hatshepsut's reign as it is an exhortation to his court to accept her reign. In response, his court acknowledges that they accept her as pharaoh.

To conclude the coronation, Thutmose I leads Hatshepsut in a ceremony. Running the circuit was a common Egyptian ceremony intended to show the strength and power (usually, the virility) of the king. Thutmose I also proclaims the names that Hatshepsut is now given to celebrate her accession to the throne, which is complete at this point. In the concluding remarks, the newly crowned Hatshepsut is led away by the gods to complete the ceremonies. Hatshepsut is purified, and her newly established reign is inaugurated with a blessing from Horus.