Hatshepsut

here another story from the book Goodnight stories for rebel girls. It is the story of Hatshepsut, a woman who became pharaoh in the Ancient Egypt.

Long before Cleopatra, a woman ruled Egypt for twenty-five years. Her name was Hatshepsut and she was the first woman to become pharaoh.

At the time, the idea of a woman being pharaoh was so strange that Hatshepsut had to act as she was a man in order to convince Egyptians that she was their legitimate leader. She proclaimed herself king and not queen; she wore men’s clothes and sometimes even put on a false beard!

Hatshepsut reigned longer and more successfully than any other pharaoh in all Egyptian history. But apparently that wasn’t enough. Twenty years after she died, someone tried to erase her from history. Statues of her were smashed, and her name was removed from the records.

Why? Because, a femal pharaoh freaked people out. What if her succes encouraged other women to seek power? Thankfully, it’s not so easy erase the memory of someone immortalized in stone.

Enough traces of her life and work remained for modern archeologists to piece together her story.

Hatshepsut’s mummy, wrappen in linen and perfumed with resins, had been removed from her original grave and hidden, but it was found in the Valley of the Kings a few years ago.

 

For the teacher:

Goodnight stories for rebel girls in Italian is Storie della buonanotte per bambine ribelli.

The beautiful illustration is by Eleni Kalorkoti: here the link to her site.