Teach This Woman
Middle School+
Discussion Questions
- 1Why Erase? - Thutmose III (or his supporters) did not just kill Hatshepsut or remove her from the throne. They systematically erased her from monuments, statues, and inscriptions across all of Egypt. What would motivate someone to invest that level of resources in destroying a historical record? What does the scale of the effort tell us about what they were afraid of?
- 2What Survives? - Hatshepsut's buildings were massive, numerous, and survived despite the erasure campaign. The CT scan that identified her mummy used modern technology to match physical evidence that had survived three thousand years. What does this tell you about the relationship between what is destroyed and what actually survives? What does it mean that her body was in the museum the whole time?
- 3The Gap in the Record - For three thousand years, Egyptologists studying king lists found a gap they could not explain. Hatshepsut's name was absent from the official records, but her buildings were still standing. How do you reconstruct a historical figure when the official record has been deliberately altered? What sources might you turn to, and what are their limitations?
- 4Gender and Power - Hatshepsut took on male pharaonic regalia, including the ceremonial beard. She had herself depicted in full male form. Why would a female ruler choose to represent herself as male? What does this tell us about the relationship between gender and the exercise of power in ancient Egypt - and does that relationship have echoes in how we think about gender and power today?
- 5Permanent Solutions - The erasure campaign against Hatshepsut lasted for thousands of years in its effects. But it ultimately failed. What does it mean to attempt a permanent solution to a historical problem? Is permanence even possible through destruction?
Key Takeaways
- ◆1. Organized Erasure Is a Form of Power - The campaign to remove Hatshepsut from the historical record was not random or spontaneous. It was organized, systematic, and executed at scale across an entire civilization. Understanding that erasure is a form of power - one that requires resources and coordination to execute - helps us recognize it when we see it.
- ◆2. Building Survives What Records Do Not - Hatshepsut's buildings survived long after her statues were smashed and her inscriptions were chiseled away. The archaeological record and the documentary record are different things, and what survives in one does not necessarily survive in the other.
- ◆3. Recovering from Organized Erasure Takes Time - It took Egyptologists decades to piece together Hatshepsut's reign from fragments. This was not because the fragments were hard to find - many were visible and documented for centuries. It was because the official historical record had been systematically altered, and reconstructing the truth required treating that alteration as a fact to be explained rather than a record to be trusted.
- ◆4. Physical Evidence Outlasts Political Decisions - The mummy in the Cairo Museum was identified in 2007 using modern medical technology. The physical evidence - a tooth - had survived three thousand years of political decisions about what to erase and what to preserve. Physical evidence does not care about historical revision.
- ◆5. The Person and the Record Are Not the Same - Hatshepsut was real. She ruled Egypt. She built temples. She negotiated trade. None of that changed when her name was chiseled off walls. The erasure campaign changed the record, not the person. Understanding the difference matters for understanding how historical records work and what they can and cannot tell us.
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