The Woman Who Would Be King (18 page)

The nature of each man’s personal dealings with Hatshepsut remains a mystery, and we know even less about their relationship to each other. Did she appoint the two men to the same office so that neither could become overly powerful from access to all of Egypt’s wealth? Had experience with competition taught the Egyptian elite to create a system of government that avoided such a concentration of power in one man? The country already had a tradition of two viziers, one for the north and one
for the south. Perhaps Hatshepsut was simply continuing this approach of checks and balances among her officials.

These two men could not have had more different backgrounds. Unlike Senenmut, Ahmose Pennekhbet came from a patrician family who lived in el-Kab, a town close to Thebes, and he had served the early Eighteenth Dynasty kings in their campaigns against the fleeing Hyksos in Syria-Palestine, getting rich in the process on the spoils of war. He seems to have established his career in the military and later became ensconced in the upper echelons of palace administration and finance. The family tombs at el-Kab suggest that Ahmose Pennekhbet’s wife was a wet nurse to Thutmose III, probably a move made by Hatshepsut to keep this important official close—the family’s residence would have been in a palace apartment to accommodate his wife’s duties.

Senenmut, in contrast, was one of Hatshepsut’s “new men”; he came from more humble beginnings. And unlike his patrician colleague, he left absolutely no evidence of a wife or children. Not one of his dozens of statues, reliefs, and temple depictions records the existence of a family of his own. Without a doubt, if anything should make us wonder about the nature of his relationship with Hatshepsut, it is his lack of a wife. All Egyptian elites married. If a wife died in childbirth or from disease, an official usually married again. To not have any mention of a female partner anywhere in his extensive historical record is more than strange—it is aberrant. And so we wonder if he blatantly ignored his family to please Hatshepsut, because they were in fact lovers, or if there was something else going on. Senenmut’s historical record is much more extensive than that of any other official at the time, but it seems that some of Hatshepsut’s other officials also made no mention of their families on their tombs or statues.
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Perhaps such absences were demanded by a jealous mistress, and if so then there is a lot more about Hatshepsut’s character that we do not know.

Of course, homosexuality might seem another possible explanation for Senenmut’s lack of a wife. The ranks of Egyptian elites undoubtedly included some men with same-sex desires, and some of these men might even have been able to talk of their sexual interests openly. But all our evidence indicates that such men would have still married in the hopes of having sons to inhabit their offices after their death. A man’s future lay with his children. An official’s prosperous retirement rested with his
son’s ability to take over his profession. Senenmut’s lack of a wife (or lack of mention, at least) and the great favor Hatshepsut showed toward him do indeed raise suspicions, despite the probable twenty-year difference in their ages.
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These are interesting conjectures, but because other officials neglected to mention their wives in their tomb chapels, Senenmut’s similar omission confirms nothing about his lifestyle, let alone his relationship with Hatshepsut.

We might wonder if Thutmose III felt shut out of this close circle created by Hatshepsut, her daughter, and Senenmut. The latter’s role as tutor must have fostered a tight relationship with the princess, and his many jobs for Hatshepsut certainly kept the bureaucrat in constant contact with the female king. Indeed, some of Senenmut’s earliest statues created during Hatshepsut’s regency,
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when Thutmose III was a sole but infant king, include no mention of the boy at all, a not-so-subtle testament to what Senenmut thought of the new king’s importance in relation to his mistress.

Most of Hatshepsut’s story thus far has been tied to Thebes, not only because so many of her temples and texts have been preserved in its desert sands but also because this was, in truth, the base of her power. Hatshepsut’s royal family was buried at Thebes, in what we now call the Valley of the Kings. Her priestess position as God’s Wife of Amen was centered in Thebes. Amen’s temple of Ipet-Sut at Karnak had grown to become one of the richest and most influential religious institutions in the land. But Egypt was a much larger political entity, essentially an oasis expanse stretched from north to south over hundreds of miles and inhabitable only where the Nile cut through and inundated its desert sands. Hatshepsut would have known that control of Thebes was not enough. She needed to ensure that she had all the provinces and local governors in line, that taxes were collected, that temples were maintained and priests were happy with their income, that government and judicial activity was happening as it should. To do this, Hatshepsut needed to contend with the dozens of governors and mayors of the forty-two regions up and down the Nile and in the delta. She thus employed numerous royal heralds who traveled throughout Egypt and abroad with authority to speak for the king and, probably, to bestow his favors upon loyal officials.

She also had to focus sharp attention on the administration of Nubia, a land of gold mines and stone quarries, but also the home of a subjugated people full of resentment and hostility. The Egyptian viceroy of Nubia bore the formal title King’s Son of Kush; because of the extensive and dangerous travel required, it was a stressful position that was frequently vacant. However, the risky job promised a huge payoff in return: Nubia controlled more cold hard exchangeable wealth, in the form of gold and other minerals, than anywhere else in the known world. The vast distances between Kush and the royal court, or the Egyptian army, were temptation enough for many an administrator to take more than his due. Free access to the most fungible wealth available in the ancient world seemed to seduce many of the Egyptian men put in charge of Nubia; as a result, removal from office was common and demanded with impunity. Hatshepsut, however, seems to have handled these potential pitfalls with care and attention and kept a firm hand on the men who administered Nubia for her.
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In year 5 of Thutmose III’s reign, Hatshepsut made a crucial appointment to her government. She designated a man called Useramen as vizier in the south.
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The vizier acted as the king’s lieutenant in all administrative, military, and economic matters. Useramen was stationed at Thebes, and Hatshepsut seems to have relied on him for her most important state business.

The vizier worked closely with the treasurers, monitoring the security of the storerooms holding all the household goods and wealth and administering the tax income that was the palace’s lifeblood. Hatshepsut knew that Useramen would require strong working relationships with Senenmut and Ahmose Pennekhbet. The three men must have been thrown into one another’s company a great deal, but the nature of their interactions—friendly or hostile or suspicious—remains unknown.

Useramen acted as the lieutenant of Hatshepsut, not Thutmose III. This southern vizier must have been invested in Hatshepsut’s well-being, because, if someone had wanted to see Hatshepsut dead, Useramen could have easily arranged it. He also controlled Hatshepsut’s communication with the rest of Egypt: he was the main conduit, through a legion of royal heralds, between the capital cities and the local rulers spread out across the Two Lands. The royal heralds reported directly to Useramen and kept him abreast of all activities throughout the country; he then distilled, filtered, and relayed this information to Hatshepsut in person. He could easily
have deceived Hatshepsut on large and small matters, but there is no evidence of such subterfuge or the need for it. We can imagine the two of them together in her smaller audience hall working out plans of action for specific troubles and issues. As always, Hatshepsut continued to choose her advisers shrewdly.

Useramen also oversaw all southern military expeditions, all trade excursions, all taxes, and all royal works projects like temple building or the construction of the king’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. He may have even organized trade with Syrian and Minoan palaces and encouraged contact with peoples whose existence had never before been acknowledged by the elites in Thebes. Contact with the Keftiu of Crete, for instance, was considered so exotic and fashionable that every Theban official who kept up with the trends included a scene in his tomb chapel of these Minoan men in their colorful woolen garments, holding luxurious commodities.

Useramen must have been a close and trusted confidant and supporter of Hatshepsut. She appointed him after five years of regency, when she was probably in her early twenties, mature enough to know her own mind and abilities and experienced enough to have been betrayed more than once by undependable and self-interested officials. Useramen’s loyal service was abundantly rewarded with bonuses, a fine tomb, and rich monuments. He kept her unorthodox position as regent safe. He kept her family safe. He kept her money safe. And he kept tribute and taxes flowing into the palace. In return, Hatshepsut compensated him with things more valuable than money, such as secret and, to the Egyptians, profoundly powerful texts only available to priests of the highest initiation that thus far had been inscribed only in the tombs of kings. Useramen actually had the otherwise-royal Book of Amduat painted in his burial chamber,
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which ostensibly gave him the same access to the mysteries and powers of the solar barque as the king and chief priest. All the evidence indicates that Useramen’s constancy was crucial for Hatshepsut to maintain her dominance during the early reign of Thutmose III, and she gave whatever was required to secure it.

Hatshepsut did not overlook her state temples: indeed, she put the staffing of Egypt’s temples at the top of her agenda; she must have known it was a key to her success and one of the pillars of Thutmose III’s young kingship. She was instrumental in professionalizing Egypt’s religious arm. Temples that had previously functioned with short-term service by local
elites were now staffed with full-time administrators and priests trained specifically for a life in religious service. These men had access to vast sums of cash and grain, but these were resources taken from the stores of the gods, not the wealth of the king. By all accounts, a veritable army of religious men rose under the rule of Hatshepsut, and she likely saw political wisdom in creating a legion of devoted godly supporters. Many of these priestly offices became hereditary and were passed down from father to son, thus increasing the position’s long-term value. High-level priestly appointments were Hatshepsut’s to give as she chose. For instance, she or her mother, Ahmes, may have appointed Hapuseneb as High Priest of Amen during the latter years of Thutmose II. He oversaw the construction projects at Karnak and Luxor, massive works funded by the hoards of gold streaming in from Nubia, and he set in motion Hatshepsut’s aim to create the most lavish and awe-inspiring monuments the world had ever seen.

Hatshepsut kept her eyes on the problems of the present moment, but at the same time she had a responsibility to consider eternity. Egyptians traditionally constructed their tombs during their lifetime, and Hatshepsut was no exception. Accordingly, probably while Thutmose II was still alive or soon after his death, Hatshepsut began a tomb for herself in a remote valley (the Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida) in the far south of the vast Theban necropolis.
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To hold her body, she commissioned a precious sarcophagus of quartzite that was placed in the tomb to await her death. However, Hatshepsut would soon abandon this tomb and the priceless body container, commissioning a new, bigger, and more beautiful sarcophagus.

Hatshepsut had set all the pieces in place. She handpicked the tutors and nurses of the young king-in-training. She worked with loyal temple personnel grateful for her gifts and cognizant of the depth of her own religious capacities. She had Egypt’s financiers in her pocket; some of them even served as tutor to her daughter in her own home. She now needed to co-opt the venerable families of Egypt by appointing as midlevel officials young men who would continue to support her and her ongoing rule for the king. But here she was at a disadvantage: typically a prince raised at court would have trusted childhood friends with whom he had shared lessons and beatings and with whom he had grown up to
be skilled in the ways of war and administration; later, were he to become king, he could rely upon these fast and tested friends. Hatshepsut had no such intimate companions, no pool of men of known character to be handpicked to serve as new officials, and Thutmose III was obviously too young to have any of his own. Raised as a princess, Hatshepsut was likely separated from the young men who were now candidates for office, and yet she needed them to fill many positions: royal butlers, priests, overseers of stables, fan bearers (bodyguards), overseers of works, royal barbers, and physicians. Hatshepsut seems to have solved the problem with a combination of intimidation and money. Upstart lieutenants may have been kept in line with threats to their lives and livelihoods—a rare occurrence, most likely, but one visible in her later texts about disloyalty being treated with death. Spreading around money was easier than bullying. With economic co-option built into their political system and with tribute pouring in from Egypt’s recently expanded empire, new officials could be assured of great payoffs in exchange for their support of this unconventional and drawn-out regency.