Several years into her regency, Hatshepsut assumed the position of pharaoh and adopted the full royal titulary, making her a co-ruler alongside Thutmose III.

[13] However, modern scholars agree that, while she initially served as regent for young Thutmose III from his accession in c. 1479 BC, Hatshepsut eventually assumed the position of pharaoh alongside him by Year 7 of his reign, c. 1472 BC; becoming queen regnant, Hatshepsut shared Thutmose III's existing regnal count, effectively back-dating her accession as pharaoh to Year 1, when she had been merely regent.

[34] Hatshepsut had the expedition commemorated in relief at Deir el-Bahari, which is also famous for its realistic depiction of Queen Ati of the Land of Punt.

At these temples, she performed religious rituals that had hitherto been reserved for kings, corroborating the evidence that Hatshepsut assumed traditionally male roles as pharaoh.

[37][page needed] She employed the great architect Ineni, who also had worked for her father, her husband, and for the royal steward Senenmut.

She also restored the original Precinct of Mut, the great ancient goddess of Egypt, at Karnak that had been ravaged by the foreign rulers during the Hyksos occupation.

The name, Pakhet, was a synthesis that occurred by combining Bast and Sekhmet, who were similar lioness war goddesses, in an area that bordered the north and south division of their cults.

The cavernous underground temple, cut into the rock cliffs on the eastern side of the Nile, was admired and called the Speos Artemidos by the Greeks during their occupation of Egypt, known as the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

This temple has an architrave with a long dedicatory text bearing Hatshepsut's famous denunciation of the Hyksos that James P. Allen has translated.

[51] Hatshepsut assumed all the regalia and symbols of the Pharaonic office in official representations: the Khat head cloth, topped with the uraeus, the traditional false beard, and shendyt kilt.

The royal nobles, the dignitaries, and the leaders of the people heard this proclamation of the promotion of his daughter, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare—may she live eternally.

[10][8][61] The precise date of the beginning of Thutmose III's reign as sole ruler of Egypt—and presumably of Hatshepsut's death—is considered to be Year 22, II Peret, Day 10, recorded on a single stela erected at Armant,[10][62] corresponding to 16 January 1458 BC.

[63] This information validates the basic reliability of Manetho's king list records since Hatshepsut's known accession date was I Shemu, Day 4.

These actions could have been motivated by Amenhotep II, Thutmose III's son from a secondary wife, in an effort to secure his own uncertain claim to the throne.

Besides what was recovered from KV20 during Egyptologist Howard Carter's clearance of the tomb in 1903, other funerary furniture belonging to Hatshepsut has been found elsewhere, including a lioness throne or bedstead, a senet game board with carved lioness-headed, red-jasper game pieces bearing her pharaonic title, a signet ring, and a partial shabti figurine bearing her name.

In the Royal Mummy Cache at DB320, a wooden canopic box featuring an ivory knob was found, bearing the name of Hatshepsut and containing a mummified liver or spleen, along with a molar tooth.

In spring 2007, the unidentified body, called KV60A, was finally removed from the tomb by Dr. Zahi Hawass and taken to Cairo's Egyptian Museum for testing.

This mummy was missing a tooth, and the space in the jaw perfectly matched Hatshepsut's existing molar, found in the DB320 "canopic box".

[67][68] Her death has since been attributed to a benzopyrene carcinogenic skin lotion found in possession of the Pharaoh, which led to her having bone cancer.

Erasure methods ranged from full destruction of any instance of her name or image to replacement, inserting Thutmose I or II where Hatshepsut once stood.

There were also instances of smoothing, patchwork jobs that covered Hatshepsut's cartouche; examples of this can be seen on the walls of the Deir el-Bahari temple.

[73] At the Deir el-Bahari temple, Hatshepsut's many statues were torn down and in many cases, smashed or disfigured before being buried in a pit.

While it is clear that much of this rewriting of Hatshepsut's history occurred only during the close of Thutmose III's reign, it is not clear why it happened, other than as a manifestation of the typical pattern of self-promotion that existed among the pharaohs and their administrators, or perhaps to save money by not building new monuments for the burial of Thutmose III, and instead using the grand structures built by Hatshepsut.

She used this regency to create her female kingship, constructing extensive temples to celebrate her reign, which meant that the public became used to seeing a woman in such a powerful role.

This record of success made such elites confident that she could handle Egyptian wealth and trade, capitalizing on Egypt's moment of prosperity.

Indeed, historian Kara Cooney describes Hatshepsut as "arguably, the only woman to have ever taken power as king in ancient Egypt during a time of prosperity and expansion.

[b] Tyldesley, along with historians Peter Dorman and Gay Robins, say that the erasure and defacement of Hatshepsut's monuments may have been an attempt to extinguish the memory of female kingship[35][80][81] (including its successes, as opposed to the female pharaoh Sobekneferu, who failed to rejuvenate Egypt's fortunes and was therefore more acceptable to the conservative establishment as a tragic figure) and re-legitimise his right to rule.

[37][page needed] The erasure of Hatshepsut's name—by the men who succeeded her for whatever reason—almost caused her to disappear from Egypt's archaeological and written records.

When 19th-century Egyptologists started to interpret the texts on the Deir el-Bahari temple walls (which were illustrated with two seemingly male kings) their translations made no sense.

Jean-François Champollion, the French decoder of hieroglyphs, said: If I felt somewhat surprised at seeing here, as elsewhere throughout the temple, the renowned Moeris [Thutmose III], adorned with all the insignia of royalty, giving place to this Amenenthe [Hatshepsut], for whose name we may search the royal lists in vain, still more astonished was I to find upon reading the inscriptions that wherever they referred to this bearded king in the usual dress of the Pharaohs, nouns and verbs were in the feminine, as though a queen were in question.