Hatsheput

Queen Hatshepsut or Hatshepsut the Pharaoh, depending on how she was known in life and during her rein which varies between 1504 bc and 1458 bc, but covers a period of 15 to 22 years, depending on what reference source is looked at (Gill). Queen Hatshepsut is said to have been the 5th or 6th pharaoh in the 18th dynasty and to have been the most successful woman to rule as a pharaoh (Wilson, 2006), probably because she was only one of two women to rule as a male pharaoh.

There were and still are many mysteries to the rule of Hatshepsut as queen and as pharaoh, such as why did she want to rule as a male pharaoh? What really happened to Hatshepsut in 1458 BC? Did she just disappear, did Thutmose III murder her, or was she ill? The manner in which she died or disappeared is a mystery. The final mystery is how was Hatshepsut’s body identified, where was it found and why did it take so many years.

The location and identity of Hatshepsut were difficult mysteries to solve and go hand in hand when describing the mystery of her identification because before she could be identified by archaeologists, they had to find where her sarcophagus was buried, as it was not in the tomb she had built. In 1903 Howard Carter a tomb called KV60 located in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. In the tomb, Carter found the bodies of two elderly women along with mummified geese and other items. One of the coffins was labeled with the name and title of the Great Royal Nurse, In. The other female was unidentified and was found lying on the floor. Although this unidentified woman was lying in a “royal” burial position with the left arm positioned across her chest, it was not initially believed she was royal. The coffin and mummy inside were later moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (Boddy-Evans, 2008).

In approximately 2007, archaeologists returned to tomb KV60 while still searching for the tomb of Hatshepsut. It was decided to investigate the unidentified mummy that was left...