The Egyptologist who debunks Thutmose III's revenge against Queen Hatshepsut: "It wasn't hatred, it was ritual."

She was one of ancient Egypt's most successful rulers and one of the few women to reign before Cleopatra for 1,500 years, but Queen Hatshepsut's legacy was systematically erased by her stepson and successor, Thutmose III. For decades, fragments of Hatshepsut's statues found at Deir el-Bahari , her funerary complex near Luxor, were interpreted as evidence of revenge by the pharaoh. However, new research, just published in the journal Antiquity, casts doubt on this theory, which is based on the theory that the pharaoh may have orchestrated a reprisal against a woman on the throne.

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt approximately 3,500 years ago, following the death of her husband, Thutmose II . She initially served as regent for her stepson, the crown prince, but eventually consolidated power in her own right and established herself as queen-pharaoh. Scholars say she expanded trade routes and commissioned extraordinary buildings, including her mortuary temple near the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile.

"Early historians often argued that the removal of Hatshepsut's images was driven by revenge or hatred . However, my study suggests that the reasons were likely more ritualistic and practical . Therefore, the reason behind the removal of Hatshepsut's images is likely more nuanced and complex than previously thought," Wong tells ABC.

Wong conducted a thorough analysis of the archives (field notes, drawings, photographs, and correspondence) from the initial excavations at Deir el-Bahari, carried out between 1922 and 1928, which are held by the Egyptology Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He found that the condition of the recovered statues varies considerably. "A significant number of them have been preserved in relatively good condition , with their faces virtually intact. It is also surprising that some statues were recovered almost complete, while only a small proportion of fragments have been recovered from others," the researcher says.

Furthermore, he found that fragments of the same statue were frequently found in different parts of the necropolis, sometimes hundreds of meters apart, suggesting that they were not buried immediately after being removed from the temple. As a result, they were exposed to various alteration processes , the most significant of which must have been their reuse as raw material in other constructions or tools, according to the study. "These observations led me to consider how the reuse of these statues as stone material would have affected their condition," the researcher notes.

The most prominent example is found in a stone house northeast of the temple courtyard, where large sections were constructed using fragments of Hatshepsut's statuary. In this and other cases, Wong's analysis of the archive indicates that many of the statues suffered damage not caused by Thutmose III .

Furthermore, research documents that the statues damaged during this pharaoh's reign were damaged in a specific way: by breaking them at their weak points (the neck, waist, and knees). This phenomenon is known in Egyptology as "deactivating" statues. This ritual practice sought to neutralize the inherent power of images and has been applied to the statues of various pharaohs throughout history.

"Judging from the evidence at Deir el-Bahari, it is quite likely that most of them were deactivated and then used as filler for Thutmose III's construction at Karnak ," Wong notes. However, her study does not deny that Hatshepsut faced an attempt to suppress her memory, since after her death, her name was removed from some royal lists and some of her iconography was altered.

Having completed her research on the mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari, Wong is now investigating the removal of two-dimensional representations of this queen (those found on temple walls, for example), as well as the whereabouts of other statues of her outside this site. "Hatshepsut was a prolific monument builder, so there's a lot of material to explore!" she asserts.