The Collector has published a feature on Hatshepsut, the 18th Dynasty ruler whom it describes as the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Egyptian history. The article gathers ten facts about her reign, which it dates to 1473 to 1458 BC, and places her among the native rulers whose return to the throne coincided with a period of great wealth and prosperity in Egypt.
The 18th Dynasty, the piece explains, saw the resurgence of Egyptian power after a period of foreign rule. Hatshepsut belonged to that line of kings. The article notes that she was married to her half-brother, Thutmose II, and that when he died early, his infant son succeeded to the throne. It is against that background of a child heir and an experienced royal woman that Hatshepsut's own path to power unfolded, a story The Collector explores across its list.
Hatshepsut is one of the small number of women known to have held the office of pharaoh rather than acting only as a royal wife or mother, and pieces like this one form part of a wider interest in her career. Readers of Hierolyte will recall recent coverage elsewhere of Meretneith, argued in a new study to have been a female king in early Egypt, and of The Collector's own question about why most female pharaohs have been forgotten. The new article turns that attention specifically to Hatshepsut, whose long reign left a substantial record.
The Collector is a general history and art website, and its Hatshepsut feature is written for a broad audience rather than as a specialist study. It sets her reign within the arc of the early 18th Dynasty and the family relationships that shaped the succession, offering a compact introduction to one of the best-documented rulers of the New Kingdom. The full list of ten facts is available on The Collector's website.
For readers who want to go beyond the summaries and meet Hatshepsut in her own script, her royal names survive in inscriptions and monuments across Egypt, and learning to read them is one of the pleasures the Hierolyte app is built around.