Queen Hatshepsut: Discovered By Modern Forensic Science
Queen Hatshepsut was the daughter of Tuthmosis I and married her half- blood brother, Tuthmosis II. When the queen’s husband/brother died, she assumed the throne and reined over Egypt for fifteen years successfully. She was only the second woman known to have assumed power. She was the sixth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty and by far the most successful women to have ruled Egypt as pharaoh. Queen Hatshepsut was portrayed with muscles and a beard in order to gain support from the Egyptians as a man. Hatshepsut ruled during the Golden Age of the New Kingdom. A portion of her success can be attributed to the time in which she reigned, in a time of stability and prosperity rather than the upheaval
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Monuments dedicated to Queen Hatshepsut were marred beyond the point of recognition and her name was scratched from all records kept. Her mummy went missing. The queen simply disappeared from Egypt’s history. The fact that Queen Hatshepsut’s mummy disappeared troubled archaeologists for over one hundred years. They were unable to account for the disappearance of her remains; remains that held the key into unlocking the truth behind Queen Hatshepsut’s notorious reign over …show more content…
He stumbled upon two sarcophagi, one for Queen Hatshepsut and another for her father. However, both were empty. For years, the riddle has focused on a separate tomb known as KV60. Inside KV60, Howard Carter discovered coffins filled with mummified geese. When the geese were removed, he discovered coffins of two women laying side by side. One mummy was labeled with the description, “Sitre-In” (Hatshepsut’s wet nurse), and the other was unable to be identified. Due to the erasing of all history behind Queen Hatshepsut, the tomb was not considered royal and went unnoticed for years. In 1989, Egyptologist Donald Ryan reopened the obscure tomb. The sarcophagus inscribed with the name of the wet nurse was taken to a museum in Cairo, Egypt, leaving the unidentified sarcophagus behind in the