Acoustic Memories

|| remembering hatshepsut ||

in this story she smiles and i remember.

not a queen. of course not. a pharaoh. in a world
that ate up young women she rose from the ground and
had her statues modelled after male pharaohs and
refused to be called queen.

in this story she rewrites herself as a man. wears a fake beard,
because it is the only way to state her dominance and
authority. in this story, she's one of the most successful pharaohs
in ancient egyptian history, and reigns longer than any
other woman in power.

in this story the pharaoh after her tries to erase her out of history. he
chisels her name off her monuments; covers the text on her
obelisks with stone, and knocks down and defaces her statues.
in this story, she's deleted off the list of pharaohs.

(in the afterlife when she meets cleopatra they
look at one another and know. cleopatra was famed for her
beauty for men who could never accept her cleverness,
and when they didn't want to talk about how she
ruled and her cleverness they switched her intelligence for beauty.)

in this story egyptians believe that if you're forgotten in the
living world, you don't exist in the afterlife. the pharaoh after
her tries to kill her even in death. erases her legacy and clears her name.

[but in this story, the pharaoh after her is also her nephew
whom she bought up. he used to come to court with her.
looked up to her till the army snatched him up.
when he came back, her nephew was dead, and she was going
to die.]

in this story, her name is lost for a couple of millennia, and
her body is found in an unmarked grave in early
twentieth century. in this story, she smiles even after a trillion years,
and i remember. i remember to keep her alive
in the afterlife.

---

the story is true. she reigned for 22 years, established trade networks and was one of the most prolific builders in ancient Egypt. she commissioned hundreds of construction projects. she was a goddamn goddess and even allied herself with the goddess isis. (in the media is a picture of her mummy. for someone who died of bone cancer she sure has a gorgeous smile. look at that!)

her nephew didnt really have any reason to do this stuff he believed it could "cast serious doubt upon the legitimacy of his own right to rule. Hatshepsut's crime need not be anything more than the fact that she was a woman." so basically, patriarchy. "Thutmose III may have considered the possibility that the example of a successful female king in Egyptian history could demonstrate that a woman was as capable at governing Egypt as a traditional male king, which could persuade "future generations of potentially strong female kings" to not "remain content with their traditional lot as wife, sister and eventual mother of a king" and assume the crown."  which, again, says that despite all that she did and accomplished, the men (her nephew!!) still thought women should be mothers and should only belong in the kitchen.

smh. so, guys. remember her. it's the least we can do.