Dansk Ægyptologisk Selskab

Mødedato: Lørdag d. 4. oktober 2025 kl. 11-16

Lokale 23.0.49

Kl. 11.00 – The World of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III

Part 1: Regency and Coregency: the joint rule of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III

Aidan Dodson,

At the death of Thutmose II, his young son Thutmose III became king. As too young to rule, his stepmother-aunt, the dowager queen Hatshepsut, became regent. Although this role had previously been exercised by earlier dowagers, Hatshepsut’s position seems from the outset to have been more prominent than in most earlier cases, the queen appearing independently in reliefs, and in conjunction with her daughter, Neferure. Then, after seven years, she transitioned to being a fully-fledged pharaoh, as coregent with Thutmose III. As such, Hatshepsut employed a range of iconographies, ranging from being shown as a woman with a royal headdress, through to representations indistinguishable from a man, save the appearance of feminine endings in label-texts. She deployed traditional modes of legitimation, including a divine-birth legend, once thought to have originated with her, but now known to go back at least to the Twelfth Dynasty. She continued to employ many of the existing officialdom of the kingdom, but the High Steward Senenmut was rapidly elevated to exceptional prominence. This has led to suggestions that he might have been Hatshepsut’s life-partner, perhaps reinforced by the fact that Senenmut and Hatshepsut had all-but-identical sarcophagi: a ‘his-and-hers’ pair? The coregency saw not only a trading expedition to Punt on the Red Sea, but also military activity in Nubia, in which Hatshepsut personally participated.  Extensive building work was carried out throughout Egypt, but especially at Karnak where much of the present core of the complex was constructed under Hatshepsut. The female king disappears from the record in Year 21, when she presumably died, and was buried in tomb KV20 of the Kings, leaving Thutmose III as once again sole pharaoh.

Kl. 11.45           Kort pause

Kl. 12.00

Part 2: The Conqueror: the sole rule of Thutmose III

Aidan Dodson,  

As sole ruler, Thutmose III embarked immediately on an annual cycle of military campaigns into Syria-Palestine, during which he extended Egyptian power to its greatest extent in pharaonic times, even crossing the Euphrates. These campaigns were recorded in extensive ‘Annals’ texts at Karnak, and include a detailed account of the king’s attack on the strategic city of Megiddo in Palestine. The booty and taxation resulting from these activities was used to complete and extend Hatshepsut’s building programme at Karnak, including the 7th Pylon, obelisks, and the great Festival Hall (ꜣḫ-mnw). The latter included a room with remarkable set of depictions of flora and fauna brought back from campaign. Building work was also carried out throughout Egypt and Nubia, a stela of the king being the earliest monument at Gebel Barkal in the far south. A remarkable structure datable to the time of Thutmose III is a palace at Tell el-Daba (Avaris), decorated with Minoan (Cretan) paintings, suggesting some intimate link with the Aegean. Towards the end of his reign, the memory of Hatshepsut was attacked, with her images and names destroyed, and in some cases replaced by those of Thutmose I and II. The reason for this remains much debated, as does why it only occurred two decades after her death. One suggestion has been that it was incited by the young crown prince Amenhotep, one of a number of children born to Thutmose III, who had at least three wives. It has been suggested that Amenhotep II served as his coregent during his last months, but this now seems unlikely. In any case, Thutmose III died in his Year 54, and was buried in tomb KV34 in the Valley of the Kings.

Kl. 12.45           Frokostpause (tag selv mad med)

Kl. 13.30
The Tomb of Thutmosis II and other early 18th Dynasty tombs in the Western part of the Theban Necropolis

Andreas Dorn, Professor of Egyptology, Uppsala University

Since 2014, the New Kingdom Research Foundation has been conducting a comprehensive archaeological investigation of the western part of the Theban Necropolis. This area extends from the Valley of the Queens approximately 8 km westward and up to 4 km northward. It has received little scholarly attention since its only systematic survey by Howard Carter in 1917, the documentation of graffiti by J. Černý, A. Shimy, and A. Sadek in the 1970s and 80s, and the publication of the tomb of the “three foreign wives of Thutmosis III” by C. Lilyquist in 2003. As part of the archaeological and epigraphic project, which has now lasted over ten years, all structures in the area, most of which have only been partially excavated, from all eras from the Paleolithic period through prehistory to the present day, with a focus on the New Kingdom, the Late Period, and Late Antiquity, with intensive use during the Coptic period, were excavated and documented. Numerous spectacular finds were made during this work. These include what is probably the deepest Theban shaft tomb, foundation deposits beneath Hatshepsut’s cliff tomb, Coptic (monastic) settlements, over 40 tombs from the time of Hatshepsut/Thutmosis III, some of which have owners which are known from other historically sources, numerous new discoveries of graffiti, and, in particular, the tomb of King Thutmosis II, which will be the focus of the lecture.

Kl. 14.15           Kaffepause

Kl. 14.45          

Hatshepsut’s mortuary architecture between innovation and tradition

Andreas Dorn, Professor of Egyptology, Uppsala University

With the construction of rock tombs, the kings of the New Kingdom replaced the previous concept of royal tombs, which consisted of the spatially closely related architectural elements of valley temple, causeway, pyramid temple, and pyramid with royal tomb. Due to this change in concept, the royal rock cut tombs were no longer visible from a distance, but were built in unknown, hidden locations. As a result, the royal tomb and the site of the funerary cult no longer formed an architectural unit. This had various effects, including on the construction of private tombs for high officials, which had previously been built in close proximity to the royal tomb, and on the architecture and textual program in the royal tomb and in the royal mortuary temples/houses of millions of years. To illustrate these changes, the tomb (KV 20) and the house of millions of years of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari are presented and analysed. It is shown that various factors, such as the relationship between king and god, played a role, and that the abandonment of the pyramid as a royal burial form and the separation of tomb and funerary cult place did not occur abruptly, but rather that there were various precursors to this.