 | Luxor Temple of Hatshepsut Reviews | Tips 21 - 30 of 95 |  |
 | |  |  | Temple of Hatshepsut: The Most Powerful Woman Pharoah | Tip Rating:    |  |  | |  |
Other than the Ptolemaic Cleopatra, who came a thousand or so years later, Hetshepsut figures as the most well known woman ruler of Egypt. She was the popular daughter of Tuthmosis I, who was himself quite a popular and successful empire builder. Hatshepsut basically maintained the integrity of her father's empire, using her political court intrigue to maintain herself on the throne. Actually, her husband and half brother, whose mother was not queen, Tuthmosis II, became also her husband. Tuthmosis II was weak both in terms of political skills and health, and he died within three years of ascending to power. Hatsephsut had no children by him, but her husband had a bastard son named Tuthmosis III, whom Hatsephsut send abroad for 22 years. She ruled for some 20 years, constructing a large number of temples at Karnak and elsewhere, and commissioned a merchant expedition to Punt (modern day Somalia). She died on the throne, and Tuthmosis III returned to take the reigns of power. Tuthmosis III was himself a considerable ruler, who systematically defaced Hatshepsut's image wherever it was, but fortunately added to rather than destroyed the works that she had built. There remains some debate about the nature of her rule, relative to that of her stepson Tuthmosis III, which is discussed in the web link below. The temple, her most notable acheivement for tourists, is beautifully set back against cliffs, just over an outcrop of mountain from Valley of the Kings. The temple of Hathor, the sometime female, sometimes cow headed God is an important theme in a ruined portion of the complex. Reliefs of feasts and gifts suggests that Hatshepsut was not a woman without appreciation for fun, but rather a calculating woman. She did have children by another lover, apparently. Leave a Comment Website: http://www.bediz.com/hatshep/story.html
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| | | | Temple of Hatshepsut: Site of 1997 Tourist Massacre | Tip Rating: | | | | |
In November of 1997, a few months after we had visited, there was a massacre of some 58 tourists and 4 Egyptians at the Temple of Hatshepsut. A unit of El-Gamaa El-Islamiya (the Islamic Group), a militant fundamentalist organization, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but said its men had intended only to detain tourists to force the release of their spiritual leader, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in the United States for masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. President Mubarak visited the Temple of Hatshepsut the day after the massacre and announced that stronger measures would be taken to protect foreign tourists. Security was to be increased at sites throughout the country: more police and soldiers armed with more sophisticated weapons would be on hand to guard tourists, and helicopters would begin patrolling the Nile. Given the economic importance of tourism for Egypt, it's difficult to imagine the average Egyptian being anything but nervous about the consequences of tourism at these sites, so I would not hesitate to take my chances and visit this temple again. Archeology Magazine discusses this incident and its ramifications in the website linked belowe. Meanwhile, here are more images of this wonderful world heritage site. Leave a Comment Website: http://www.archaeology.org/9803/abstracts/insight.html
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