The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt by Kara Cooney

Anybody else reading The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt by Kara Cooney?

I find the topic fascinating, but have mixed feelings about the execution. Would be interesting to discuss with someone who is also currently reading / has read the book.

The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt

Using touchstones makes it easier for people to see that someone else has mentioned the book.

Have you reviewed it yet? I see that there are several reviews.

Thanks. I don't want to review until I finish the book, but I feel like I have some thoughts in the interim that would be interesting to discuss with others.

This book sounds like it would be a great book. I'll have to check it out. #elliottlshifman

I haven't read it yet, but I have it on my 2015 TBR. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

I'm two chapters from the end, so I can't review it yet, but I can supply a preview.

This book is full of factual errors and unsupported assumptions. The author fails to discuss possible alternatives to her reconstructions and goes for sensationalism whenever possible. There are indeed sections that are well written and reasonably well-documented, but the narrative often lapses into fantasy.

For example, the early description of the ritual in which the God's Wife of Amun disrobes and fondles the divine image. There is absolutely no archaeological, pictorial, or textual evidence to support Cooney's version. Apparently a British TV "documentary" from 1996 suggested something of the same nature, but again without any support from ancient sources. And the idea that the God's Wife of Amun "aged out" of her office in her mid-twenties because she could no longer "excite" the god--this is another unsupported idea. What about the most famous God's Wife of all, Ahmose-Nefertari, who functioned in that role well into middle age?

Cooney also claims that Osiris revivified himself--that Isis had nothing to do with the god's resurrection. I see that she has claimed this elsewhere, but without citing any source to support herself.

Cooney states that Thutmose II (that would be Hatshepsut's half-brother and husband for those of you who are new to Eighteenth Dynasty history) had an enlarged heart. There is a footnote, but no source is given there. She is apparently referring to the mummy identified as that king's. Then she says that Thutmose II came to the throne at the age of twelve and died three years later. But the mummy in question is that of a man around thirty, not that of a fifteen-year-old boy. Oh yes, when Thutmose died, Hatshepsut (says Cooney) was left without a purpose in life at the age of sixteen. (The author never admits that Hatshepsut could have been quite a bit older than that at the time.)

Cooney claims that everybody in the palace was probably slightly intoxicated all the time because the Egyptians didn't drink water if they could afford alternatives (this wasn't true of medieval Europe; why should it be true of ancient Egypt?); see what I mean about sensationalism?

I could go on for some time, but would rather wait until I get done reading the book (and it's a hard slog, believe me) so that I can do a complete review. My prediction is that I won't be able to give it more than two stars.

If you want to read about Queen Hatshepsut and her world, I strongly recommend that you try to find a copy of Hatshepsut: from Queen to Pharaoh, edited by Catharine Roehrig. This exhibition catalogue is by far the best available introduction at the moment (although since there were a number of contributors the chapters are a bit uneven in quality). And because it's a catalogue, there are plenty of splendid photos to illustrate one of the most prosperous and creative periods in all of Egyptian history.

Orsolina, thanks for your input - very interesting. I'm not as knowledgeable as you are about this period of Ancient Egyptian history, so I couldn't spot the assumptions unless they were flagged with "could have been", "might have", etc. (By the way, this type of statement is seen quite often in the book, which can be off-putting for some readers, but I actually prefer some attempt to fill in the blanks, as long as we are clear which statements are conjectures and which are facts.)

I'm about halfway through the book, and my problem with it is almost the opposite - I often feel there is not enough meat in the descriptions. I wouldn't mind either more intelligent guesses (properly flagged, of course) or facts if there are some to be had. As it is, there are a lot of repetitive chapters making general statements such as (and this is not a direct quote), "Hatshepsut knew how to keep officials on her side by letting them oversee important works." In this kind of example, I would like to hear more about what constituted "important works" and what benefits could accrue to said officials for overseeing them. Sometimes these points were addressed obliquely by saying something like, "officials could always skim off the top of the resources." To me, this is just too vague. Maybe this is the best to be had considering the dearth of detailed information about such dealings, but then I would almost rather it didn't get mentioned at all. As it is, what we get is neither here nor there - a lot of vague, general statements that don't let the layperson form a vivid picture of what Hatshepsut's interactions with her officials were like, but that may be actually too speculative for any serious scholar to be satisfied either.

That said, there are aspects of the book that don't have this particular problem, and orsolina mentions some of them. Perhaps Cooney's suppositions are too sensational or controversial, but at least in those chapters, one can envision what palace life might have been like for Hatshepsut, as well as what religious rituals might have been like. Of course, I would prefer that these ideas had some basis in fact, even if not 100% agreed on by all scholars. For example, I enjoyed the descriptions of common ailments and found it interesting that, according to Cooney, most Egyptians, including royals, would have contended with intestinal parasites and the like throughout their lives. To me, this doesn't sound too far-fetched, and is the sort of thing one rarely finds mention of in a serious scholarly work. However, it lets me form some kind of image of their daily lives. I guess what I look for in a history book is a way to connect to people's experiences at the time on a personal level - I find that's the only way I can really understand historical events.

So, as I said, mixed feelings. I realize I probably haven't reached the most exciting part of Hatshepsut's career yet, so my opinions may change.

That general statement about officials overseeing important works--Cooney makes it sound rather underhanded. Recognizing talent and appointing competent officials, promoting and rewarding them for good work--that's part of the duty of a good king (or queen regnant in this case). It's not a matter of paybacks and corruption. (I dislike Cooney's frequent use of the word "scheme.")

Consider that for Hatshepsut to have taken over the day-to-day running of Egypt in her nephew's childhood, she must already have had a lot of high officials on her side--men who had worked for her father and brother, and even older officials--retired military men and the like--who were involved in the working out of a solution to the unusual and possibly dangerous situation that faced the government at the time. Cooney implies that Hatshepsut wouldn't have known any of these men already, particularly since she is so insistent on the youth of the Queen and her brother.

One matter that I omitted above and was reminded of in # 7 is the author's use of "money" and "cash" in her narrative. Pharaonic Egypt did not have currency. It was a barter economy, so to use those words is extremely misleading, reminding one of Eloise Jarvis McGraw, the novelist, whose Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptians use coins--at least a millennium too early!