HATSHEPSUT

"I have restored that which was in ruins. I have raised up that which was destroyed."

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Long before Cleopatra, the first woman to ever become pharaoh, Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for 25 years! At the time the idea of a woman being pharaoh was so strange that she even had to act like a man in order to convince Egyptians that she was there legitimate leader. She proclaimed herself king (not queen), cancelled the female suffix in her name, wore men’s clothes and sometimes even put on a false beard!

Hatshepsut ruled longer and more successfully than any other pharaoh in history, and yet, 20 years after her death, people smashed her statues and removed her from records, to erase her from history!

Thankfully, a legend immortalised in stone cannot be erased from memory. Enough traces of her life and work remained for modern archaeologists to piece together her story. Hatshepsut's mummy had also been removed from her original grave and hidden, but was quite recently found in the Valley of Kings. ...And all of this just because people couldn’t accept a female leader.