Hatshepsut

BBC had a documentary recently about Hatshepsut (first half of the fifteenth century BCE), one of the few female Pharaoh’s (not the first, incidentally, as they make it seem). (What’s so fascinating about her, parenthetically, is that she presented herself as a male ruler. Ancient Egyptian also didn’t have a term for female monarch. But that’s not what this documentary is about.) In Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri (across the Nile from Luxor) there are scenes depicting an expedition to the land of Punt. This wondrous, distant land has troubled Egyptologists for ages. Where is Punt? Did the whole expedition happen? Could Egyptians even build ships that navigated the seas? Or is this the stuff of legends that true historians ought to dismiss as fanciful nonsense?

In my classes I would indicate that Hatshepsut was a not a military ruler, she didn’t campaign with Egyptian armies in the Levant (the Middle East) or in Nubia (south of Egypt, in northern Sudan). Instead, she supported trade expeditions – maintaining her position of power as a female sovereign through peaceful means that enriched Egypt (and must have pleased the nobility with luxuries). But “peace sells” only when people are happy, when times are good and enemies are leaving you alone. Hatshepsut could boost her position and the morale of the populations returning from a mysterious land with rich treasures of exotic woods, gold, precious jewels and gems, ebony and ivory, animal hides and ostrich feathers, living animals (giraffes, panthers and cheetahs), and perhaps most importantly of all (at least to the priests of Egypt) live myrrh trees and other marvelous resins for incense.

A few years ago at Mersa Gawasis along the Egyptian Red Sea coast, archaeologists uncovered wooden boxes bearing inscriptions that read “wonderful things of Punt”! They also found coiled ropes and ship timbers. Those finds, combined with the depictions at Deir el-Bahri of the seafaring expedition, allow maritime archeologists to endeavor the nearly unthinkable task of building a replica of an ancient Egyptian ship. Egyptians didn’t use nails or screws, or any kind of metal, to fasten planks, instead they used mortise and tenon joints. Moreover, there is no evidence that Egyptians used pitch, resin, bitumen, or any other product to make ships watertight – in other words, they became watertight because the wood would swell after the ships were launched.

Except when the ship makers are done at the yard ... it leaks terribly ... they wait for the wood to swell ... they wait two weeks ... and after pumping all the water out ... the ship still is not watertight! A traditional method in Egypt, still (and attested in other ancient cultures), is using linen (or other plant fibers) as well as beeswax. Then, finally, after nearly a year of construction, the replica sets sail! They’re on open water for days, everything goes fine, they put the ship to the test, and they are even joined by dolphins (just as the relief scenes depict at Deir el-Bahri)! In short, ancient Egyptian some three thousand five hundred years ago could have sailed down the Red Sea coast to the Horn of Africa.