Between Oracle and History

First semester at UNCW was just short of being a nightmare. I couldn't take any fictions courses (having transferred into their program ready to take 400-level courses, but of course, Junior level courses were filled by the time I came in), I misliked my Nonfiction class immensely, and had a history course taught by one of the most willfully ignorant people I've ever known in an educator's position. Ever. This guy taught the same course repeatedly, yet couldn't (or, in a way, worse: wouldn't) answer questions put to him about the subject at hand. Although he could, with great eagerness, talk at length about the Tar Heels basketball team...

With this paper, a biograph of an Egyptian pharaoh, he said he didn't want to just see the same old boring history paper, he wanted something different. I turned in my thesis statement paper and my version of an outline of the crucial information I'd include. Then I told him I intended to take him up on that "something different" kind of paper; would it be all right to play with some conventions in writing it? Yes, so long as the information necessary to fulfill the requirements are met.

I turned in the following and was waylaid to have it returned to be with a D grade on it.

Going to discuss it with him he stated that although I fulfilled the requirements of information and references, a "history paper isn't the place to make up your own rules for writing." He didn't like the creative aspect. Turns out, he did want just a bunch of plain ol' ordinary boring history papers.

I dropped the class 10 minutes after leaving his office.

Dr. —, you're an asshole.

My opinion and I'm entitled to it, you shit-for-brains.


~•~
(2nd Draft)


HST 305 The Ancient Near East
September 22, 2008


HATCHEPSUT:
Between Oracle and History


This is the fifty-third year of my reign as Pharaoh of Egypt and I stand in my Hall of Annals reading the record of my deeds: the construction of dozens of great temples like this one here at Karnak; my many battles and campaigns--none equalling my first, where the Canaanites of Kadesh said my fury in the shadow of Mt. Carmel was like the end of the world; and, of course, my own ornate tomb in the valley where the kings before me lay awaiting the judgment of Anubis's scales. For fifty-three years I have reigned, but not all of those was I the sole ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt. For the first twenty-two years, I shared regency with my aunt and step-mother. She is now known as a pretender to the throne, a usurper of power. And I, of course, have done nothing to discourage such tales. It is only in my own interest to allow such disparagement, for what is written and told about a person, or even a god, matters more than what actually was. And it is my accomplishments and victories which should now be remembered, for it would be vain for me to believe that I will not soon take residence in my own tomb.

Hatchepsut built this temple where my Annals now stand, I have only modified it by adding fresh sandstone walls on which my deeds are inscribed. It shall be my name remembered at Karnak, not hers. I know there are some even in my own house and court who have whispered that it is out of spite, or bitterness that I have scratched out and hidden the name of my aunt from the walls of these temples. If I had been bitter I would have torn down her statues, stelae, and obelisks when she first died!

No, it is economical this way, that is all. More political. Why spend the time and effort building a whole new palace when you can just rearrange one so recently built? Just because my Hall of Annals covers my aunt's sanctuary where she had depicted the Oracle of Amon, proclaiming herself to be not only of full royal blood--having constantly reminded me that my mother was not a noble and thus I was not born to be king and pharaoh--but of divine blood, and decreed to rule the Two Lands of Egypt.

Behind the walls I have erected where my deeds are carved into, are the original walls of this temple, on which the Oracle reveals, "Uttered by Amon-Ra, Lord of the Thrones of Two Lands, 'Welcome, my beloved daughter Hatchepsut, I am thy beloved father. I establish for thee thy rank in the kingship of the Two Lands. I have fixed thy titularly.'"

Since it was written, it was so. Such is the way of words, and of names. Amon had declared her to be his daughter, divinely born, and she was Pharaoh. Shrewd and ambitious, upon the unforeseen early death of my father--her husband and half-brother--Hatchepsut donned the garb and appearance of a man and claimed the title of both King and Queen of Egypt. I, being too young to assert my appointment as heir, was relegated to be a co-regent of my inherited lands.

She was not a war-faring ruler--leaving such things as directing the armies of Egypt to me--and instead of expanding the empire our forebearers had established, she set about to rededicate old temples, construct vast new ones, and to allow the arts to flourish. It could be said that there was something of a renaissance in the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt under my aunt's rule. She said this was further proof of the divine proclamation that she was the rightful ruler of the dynastic lands. But, of course, that is the way she would have it be remembered, regardless of how true it actually was.

But once a story is etched in stone, it is difficult to dispute. Words are magic. We are sentenced by their spelling.

My aunt, Hatchepsut, understood this and had many monuments adorned with her likeness and name. Sometimes the truth of something doesn't matter as much as how it appears. It was not long after my aunt's death that some took to defacing her monuments and dedicated sites.

Her name was thus erased and my name was carved and spoken. Menkheperra; Thutmosis III.

No, it is not out of spite, nor bitterness, that I now set about eradicating her legacy. It is to create my own. Some of my advisors would have everything she did reduced to the sand like the red deserts to the east; and still others warn me against incurring the wrath of the gods for erasing the name of one who now lays in the valley where our kings await their afterlife.

I attempt to appease both, if only to avoid the anger of old gods and of current diplomats.

It is not that I want her forgotten--my aunt and step-mother; my co-regent; my hindrance to a sole rule. No, I do not want Hatchepsut forgotten, for she had a rightful claim to the throne--her mother was of noble lineage and her father, although not Amon-Ra, was my own grandfather, the Pharaoh Thutmosis I. But I shall not have her remembered as a divine ruler who left more monuments of stone than I.

It will be the name of Thutmosis III that shall be remembered and invoked at the Temple of Karnak, and in Semna, and at Saqqara. Hatchepsut may have been a beneficent queen to the land and people of Egypt, but she altered the history of our gods to proclaim herself the divine Pharaoh.



Bibliography

Books

Tyldesley, Joyce. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh.

London: Penguin Books, 1996.

Articles

Dorman, Peter F.

"Hatshepsut: Wicked Stepmother of Joan of Arc?"
The Oriental Institute News and Notes,
No. 168 (Winter 2001): 1-6.

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