Saturday 23 October 2010

Photo Hatshepsut Osiride Statue Face


Hatshepsut
Originally uploaded by gstei

Maat-Ka-Ra Hatshepsut. All credit to the stone-masons. Elegance, beauty and a regal look even after thousands of years.

This post features what will be the first of many Flickr photos. Credits due to those who took the photos and chose to share them with us.

Regards,

Stuart

Photo - Deir el Bahri

This photo was taken by one of the Hatshepsut Project followers, Nebojsa Milosevic. My thanks again for the photo supply.

In the background we have Hatsheput's temple and if i am not mistaken - in the foreground we have the opening to the tomb of Senenmut (the area roped off). Please correct me if this is wrong- i will look this up.


Regards,
Stuart

If you have any photos from Deir el Bahri or any others related to Hatshepsut i would be happy to hear from you.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Hatshepsut(?) - The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art - Cleveland, Ohio.

Amongst their collections we have this item:

Hatshepsut(?)

Do we have a problem here? Maybe. You will see that the description of the fragment says "Said to be from Thebes, Deir el Bahari". I will inevitably come across many items that have no exact origin and i can see this being an issue. Although here, we have a fragment which could easily have come from Deir el Bahri- we do not know for sure that this fragment shows Hatshepsut. Again in the description, we have a less-than-definite "Hatshepsut or Thutmose III".

What makes it harder to determine who this fragment is for sure is that Hatshepsut showed herself as a male (upon becoming Pharaoh), had herself depicted as such and therefore we cannot say that as the skin pigment shows brown skin- it must be male. That would be too easy.

Despite the above this fragment is a great example of the New Kingdom Art before the Amarna Period, when art changed somewhat. I will go as far as to say that the person depicted does appear (to my eye) to be from the Thutmoside Period of the early New Kingdom. With that said, this is my interpretation only, not fact.

Update: This fragment is of Thutmose III and does indeed originate from Deir el Bahri.

Thank you to Andrzej Cwiek (from the Deir el Bahri Polish Team) for supplying the information by email. Also to IUFAA for the advice (see comments).

" This fragment (Cleveland 1920.1995), representing the head of a king wearing an atef crown, comes indeed from the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. It has been published in L. M. Berman (ed.), The Cleveland Museum of Art. Catalogue of Egyptian Art, New York 1999, p. 215, fig. 159 as 'Hatshepsut or Tuthmosis III'. Now we have been able to identify its exact position within the original decoration of the temple"
The above quotation is a small part of the email. Further publications of Porter and Moss will provide substantial information on this fragment and MANY more which are from Deir el Bahri, but housed in museums and sites the world over It will also show their (original) locations within the walls of Deir el Bahri.

Regards,
Stuart

Wednesday 6 October 2010

The Hatshepsut Trilogy

Just when things have been a bit quiet, one of the blogs' followers, David Caldecoat, has just informed me of a trilogy of Hatshepsut fiction books by the author Patricia L. O'Neil.

* The first book, Her Majesty the King was released in January 2010.
* The Second Installment, The Horus Throne is out this month.
* The third and final installment is The Eye of Re,and will be released in October 2011 (plenty of time to read the first two).

Patricia has a website, which will tell you all you need to know: Hatshepsut Trilogy

David, i thank you for this information. I will of course be buying them all, but i will wait until Christmas this year as i am really looking forward to reading other books i have already purchased.

If any of you get there first- please feel free to let us all know what you think. If you wish to write a review- get in touch.

If anyone else out there wishes to contribute to the blog, i will always be happy to hear from you. It can be tough keeping up with the pace of Hatshepsut.

Regards,
Stuart