The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power. She successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt’s most prolific building periods.Ĭonstructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power-and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. Shrewdly operating the levers of power to emerge as Egypt's second female pharaoh, Hatshepsut was a master strategist, cloaking her political power plays in the veil of piety and sexual reinvention. At just over twenty, Hatshepsut out-maneuvered the mother of Thutmose III, the infant king, for a seat on the throne, and ascended to the rank of pharaoh. She is currently investigating coffin reuse during the Bronze Age Collapse, allowing her to examine funerary objects in dozens of museums around the world, including the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Louvre in Paris, British Museum in London, and the. Her academic work focuses on death preparations, afterlife beliefs, and gender studies.
Her failure to produce a male heir, however, paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king. Kara Cooney is a professor of Egyptology at UCLA. Hatshepsut-the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne-was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father’s family. An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power.
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