The Modern Resurrection of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut with Professor Aidan Dodson
This talk took place at the September meeting of the Essex Egyptology Group.
Talk information
Like the vast majority of rulers of ancient Egypt, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut had vanished from human consciousness by the end of antiquity, with a few garbled echoes to be found in the surviving excerpts of Manetho. It was only with the decipherment of hieroglyphs that they began to emerge from the shadows, and this afternoon we will explore this process. The novel status of Hatshepsut as both a woman and a king caused much head-scratching and bizarre theories before her position in history became generally accepted. Both pharaohs were great builders, and we will also trace how excavations have revealed their monuments and what they can tell us about the careers of the rulers themselves.
Professor Aidan Dodson has taught at the University of Bristol since 1996, and is a former Chairman of the Egypt Exploration Society. A graduate of Liverpool and Cambridge Universities, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003, and is the author of some thirty books. Thutmose III & Hatshepsut, Pharaohs of Egypt: their lives and afterlives is due to be published by the American University in Cairo Press at the beginning of 2025.
Meeting review
We welcomed Aidan who brought lovely September weather with him – just like last year. He traced the way knowledge about Thutmose III and Hatshepsut gradually developed from the eighteenth century onwards. The increasing knowledge of hieroglyphs and the discovery of temples, tombs and monuments enabled Egyptologists’ understanding of this period to come into focus. The full story is told in his book which will be published later in the year.