The Extraordinary Women Rulers Before Cleopatra| Egypt's Lost Queens | Real Royalty

[Music] ancient egypt a rich history that lasted for over 6 000 years [Music] and the lives and deaths of its leading characters still fascinate us today we come to museums like this one to get a real sense of the grandeur of ancient egypt monumental statues to monumental men but when we start to look around at the faces here they are just that men so where are all the women of ancient egypt well of course the most famous is cleopatra the great but then we have to go from the sublime to the ridiculous from the monumental to the tiny because most of the images we have of the great woman are in coin form but what about all the great women who came before cleopatra i want to find out who they were if you know where to look the story of ancient egypt is also the story of extraordinary women who left behind an extraordinary legacy here she is our sinnery pharaoh the goddess ancient egypt was a society in which women had more rights than anywhere else in the ancient world and i'm going to be looking at four of my favorite women of power each one a trailblazer who in different ways paved the way for the rest [Music] the venerated mother might look like a hole in the ground but this is where it all began the powerful leader look at me i am a pharaoh the perfect diplomat not only beautiful this woman was pretty clever too and cleopatra's globally minded role model she knew that knowledge really was power together they created a legacy of female authority that would influence not only cleopatra but generations to come these women were incredible role models to all of us even in the modern world [Music] and by telling their story i'll be taking a fresh look at this great civilization through the eyes of the other half of ancient egypt it's women now to understand the women of ancient egypt we need to go right back to the beginning to the egyptian's own story of creation a story that gave its female characters unparalleled powers and status powers inherited from the very gods themselves now the ancient egyptians had countless versions of the creation story but most of them centered on their very distinctive environment on the life-giving waters of the wonderful river nile now in essence what these creation myths tried to suggest was that all life had started from these waters of creation from which the great sun the source of all life had first emerged to create the deities the multitude of egyptian deities male and female no less important and just as numerous as each other the most famous of these was gregorius isis and osiris brother sister gods who were also husband and wife now according to the ancient egyptians unlike most ancient cultures it was isis who was the active dominant partner whereas osiris was a rather passive fellow in fact he was killed off early on in the story oh poor osiris the only power in the universe strong enough to bring him back to life and resurrect him was his great sister isis who brought to bear all her great magic to resurrect him from the dead and from this pair so began all humankind such stories of isis this powerful mythical woman are in many ways key to understanding how women had such prominence in egyptian life for isis was venerated as a divine mother figure and the first real woman i'm going in search of gained her own power and prestige as a mother [Music] she lived in the early time of the pharaohs known as the old kingdom more than four and a half thousand years ago and her name was hete perez for the ancient egyptians death was simply a transition to the afterlife into which the soul would need to be reborn and to house their souls as well as their bodies the egyptian elite built ever more elaborate tombs the most spectacular such tomb is the great pyramid of giza final resting place the powerful old kingdom leader pharaoh khufu everybody comes to egypt to see these and they are very big they are very grand and they are very imposing but i'm here today to see something even more interesting just over there [Music] i'm looking for the tomb of khufu's mother queen hete perez [Music] for his mother of the king it seems that khufu wanted her to be buried close by to ensure his rebirth into the next world [Music] so i've come here to find the source to find the origins of this whole entire site and it all started here might look like a hole in the ground but this is where it all began [Music] this is the entrance to the tomb of hete perez and i believe it was this mother's life-giving force that shaped this entire plateau forever now in hete perez day this landscape was a very special landscape it was on the edge of the desert where the egyptians traditionally buried their dead in the land of the west the land where the sun set and yet at her time this entire plateau had nothing on it the rest of this necropolis unfolded as a result of her tomb being here and it was filled with the most spectacular golden treasures because 20 meters down this steep shaft at the very bottom is the burial chamber and heads up harry's personal belongings covered in gold were found there in 1925 [Music] peter perez ii is the oldest intact royal burial ever found predating the tomb of toot and carmen by 1300 years and all the contents of that tiny little tomb came here to this quiet corner of cairo museum this is surely the ultimate in flat pack furniture this is the bedroom suite if you like of the great queen here perez it's absolutely stunning we've got her bed her silver headrest one of her gold thrones and all manner of gold-covered boxes and among these boxes a unique collection of jewelry was found these spectacular silver bangles which should have worn up each arm these are bespoke and if you look very carefully you can see they're all slightly different sizes they start off quite large and then they get increasingly smaller towards the wrist they would have fitted no one else and these are kind of made to measure just to fit her just to fit the great queen it's absolutely extraordinary to think that this is like four and a half thousand years old as king khufu's mother hete perez was the most important woman in his life so he made sure that her tomb was filled with all the luxuries she would need in the afterlife this fabulous gold carrying chair which was given to queen hete perez by her son is a fantastic work of art her titles are inlaid in these fine gold hieroglyphs down the back of the chair inlaid in this dark ebony wood you can see the little figure of the bee and the plant and right immediately below that is the vulture and that means mother mother of the king of upper and lower egypt the next sign is a golden falcon follower of horus and then scroll right down through all these wonderful titles that has held in her lifetime overseer of the affairs of the palace she whose every command is carried out daughter of the god's body and the last six hieroglyphs give us the name hete harris the woman herself and in the very final hieroglyph that's the so-called determinative which shows her enthroned and we come face to face with a woman herself being the mother of the king certainly had its perks and being carried around was one of them for a slightly less royal ride in the desert i've asked fatty and ibrahim for help now this wonderful thing is a replica of hete perez carrying chair and i'm going to try it out now it really symbolizes how precious this royal woman was that like the goddesses she was carried around she was far far too important to merely walk across the ground so she was carried everywhere in a chair like this one monkey wahed at nan talata alisa this is so good this is really good i wouldn't like to go very far in it though [Music] now although in many ways hete harris was the source of everything here she was only ever the king's mother she may have given birth to him guided him throughout his life and enabled him to enter the next world but she was only ever royal mother unlike my next mighty woman of power the ultimate egyptian pharaoh move forward over a thousand years to my next choice another great royal woman destined to become one of egypt's greatest pharaohs her name was hatshepsut and although at least 15 women are now known to have ruled egypt as pharaoh hatshepsut would really make history as both a monumental builder and a royal warrior although hatshepsut was of direct royal descent becoming pharaoh wasn't so straightforward and required some skillful political maneuvering at the death of her husband the reigning pharaoh her stepson and heir to the throne was too young to rule so hat shepzoot ruled on his behalf and was eventually crowned king but how did she hold on to her power staring down on visitors to cairo museum her intimidating presence can still be felt all pharaohs had to look the part but it was especially important for a woman to project herself as the perfect leader it's all about how you looked if you looked like a pharaoh you were a pharaoh you took on the attributes of the pharaoh and that's exactly what hatshepsut's doing here the correct crown the tie on false beard and other parts of the regalia were all meant to emphasize to her subjects because you're looking at 95 99 illiterate subjects they couldn't read royal edict they couldn't read any sacred inscription it was all about the visual and that is what chipset was so brilliant at doing this ultimate in propaganda look at me i am a pharaoh wearing a tie on false beard was considered a divine attribute of the gods all pharaohs had one and hatshepsut was no exception but she didn't confine such visually dazzling statements of power to her own appearance i'm traveling to hatshepsut's power base 500 kilometers south of cairo to thebes modern-day looks are for here hatshepsut remodeled the landscape with a whole series of monumental buildings the most famous her sublime funerary temple at dear elba [Music] known by its ancient name the most sacred of sacred places the temple is one of egypt's most spectacular buildings the ultimate eternal monument now seeming to emerge from the foot of the thievin hills hatshepsut's temple is a brilliant piece of architecture it's clean geometric lines contrast stunningly well against the rugged rocks behind them it's surely one of the most beautiful temples in egypt and the most fitting place to commemorate the life of the great female pharaoh hatshepsut [Music] the setting of the temple is indeed are inspiring but the reasons behind its construction go far beyond the aesthetic [Music] now hat shepsuk built here for three specific reasons firstly it lay directly across from the great temple of the state god amon ra secondly offerings could be left for her soul for eternity rather than disturbing the peace of her tomb and thirdly this place was filled with scenes personally selected by hatshepsut illustrating and emphasizing her right to the throne in short this was a piece of permanent political propaganda but hatshep's soot wasn't just a builder she was also a military commander twice leading campaigns herself against egypt's enemies in nubia and some of the offerings discovered at daryl backery hint at hatshepsut's military capabilities she led her troops into battle on at least two occasions text describe her as a conqueror she who will be a conqueror flaming against her enemies this very special thing it's a votive offering representative of an axe blade a copper alloy and it's inscribed with hatch episodes names and titles and i think in a single object it encapsulates this female pharaoh this woman warrior it's a wonderful thing having proved her military skills hatshepsut turned her attention to securing the nation's peaceful prosperity she formed economic alliances that brought wealth into her country trading with kingdoms like punt to the south on the red sea coast now hatshepsut certainly expanded egypt's trade routes and initiated commerce on a large scale she also reopened the very lucrative trading route with the land of punt down the red sea coast and we can see exactly this scene behind us now these are the egyptians arriving in punt these are the puntites coming out to meet them and this is the place where the commerce occurred it's a small low chest on which the egyptians have placed all the valuable goods the beads the bangles the metal weaponry with which they're then going to trade with the puntites for this most precious of commodities that kind of red dome shape that's actually a huge pile of myrrh resin myrrh and other resins were traditionally used in temple rituals in mummification and were also key ingredients in perfume production and hat shepsat herself is known to have used fragrant myrrh oil rubbed into her skin too as she puts it herself gleam like the stars before the whole land so in the days before the modern celebrity hatchet also had her own signature fragrance the details in such scenes certainly help piece together how hot shep soot managed to hold on to power for over 20 years [Music] but through one intriguing object i can even experience a little bit of time travel that's quite amazing this small alabaster vessel still has its original contents after almost three and a half thousand years and her names and titles are again inscribed on the front but look inside it's the actual imported resin this is the stuff that's referred to on the walls at darrell bakery and here it is it's amazing it's it's as if we can smell the past we can't just see it we can't just read the words it's contained in this very vessel maintaining power for more than two decades of peace and prosperity pat shep soot was the most successful female monarch egypt had yet seen and she had proved beyond doubt that an effective leader didn't have to be a man [Music] as part of hatchet's master plan for posterity she commissioned two pairs of pink granite obelisks at karnak temple at almost 30 meters high this one is the tallest still standing anywhere in egypt in her own words she tells us why she wanted to set up such striking monuments as a a tribute to her father to the one who made me she says and by father she didn't mean her natural parent but a moon the king of the gods to whom this whole temple is dedicated their tops would have been capped with electrum which is a blend of gold and silver and the idea is they acted as a kind of esoteric lightning rod to catch the very first rays of the sun at dawn to transmit that solar power down here into the heart of karnak temple where it could then be redistributed for the good of egypt [Music] karnak temple is the place where the god of moon was worshipped this huge religious complex was continually expanded and embellished by successive rulers and hatshepsut made sure that she paid tribute to the king of the gods in their grandest of styles [Music] this is the red chapel of ha shepsat this shrine was known as the place of the heart of a moon the state god and lay at the very center of his great temple karnak it was kind of like a sacred garage which housed the sacred bark or boat on which the gods statue stood and would have been paraded around in procession as we can see here on these wall scenes behind me you can see the rows of shaven-headed priests bringing in the sacred bark on which the statue of the god is housed hidden behind these little curtains to keep him from profane eyes [Music] and the bark itself is being greeted by the two co-rulers the young male pharaoh tothmosis bringing up the ceremonial rear as a kind of glorified magician's assistant he's burning incense to welcome the god's arrival and yet center stage is hatshepsut herself make no mistake she's the most important figure here she is the senior partner she is the child of god through such lavish endowments hatshepsut was demonstrating her veneration to a moon and assisted by the priests the pharaoh had to personally perform the necessary religious ceremonies to maintain cosmic order and this is where hatshepsut herself would have stood to perform the sacred rites before the god presenting the offerings and pouring the sacred water all around the gods statue of course hatshepsut would have used a golden vessel and we have a rusty old bucket but it gives you a kind of an idea of what would have occurred with the sacred water channeled out and beyond the chapel the gods protection spread throughout the entire land and beyond for hatshepsut wished to be eternal like an undying star and she certainly gained a unique place in history the feelings aroused by the notion of a female pharaoh remains so strong that for some hat shepherds being cast as a kind of wicked stepmother figure kind of a woman who dead to masquerade as a man dressing up with a false beard of kingship and and usurping the right to the throne for others however she's a huge inspiration an amazing woman who kind of led the way for generations to come hatshepsut's reign had been a triumph and yet at her death her stepson took soul power and for now female rule was over leaders like hatshepsut reveal ancient egypt as one of the most egalitarian societies of the ancient world where women could achieve high-powered roles own property make business deals earn equal pay and go to court [Music] it may all sound reasonable now but it was highly unusual back then [Music] i've arranged to have tea with the academic sahara moogie who's written extensively about the legacy of these incredible ancient role models thomas in terms of the female rulers of ancient egypt when you were growing up was it easy to find out about them about their legacy because i know there's very little in the egyptological literature about them they seem to have been swept very much under the academic carpet but what's the situation in egypt was it different for you i grew up not knowing about those women except in bits and pieces in boring history books at school in the process of writing i was like getting to know my mothers and grandmothers and that's why in my writings those female goddesses come back to life as inspiring figures the amount of power that i received from knowing about them through my own eyes it was immense it was magical it was like wow this is where i come from it must be said female pharaohs were quite a rarity and by the 19th dynasty a new regime of ex-military men from the north had taken power in egypt men were now very much in control and the royal women had to find other tactics around 150 years after the death of hatshepsut my next woman used diplomatic skills to assert herself at the heart of egyptian politics her name was nefertari meaning the loveliest one of all nefatari was not only beautiful she was also one of egypt's most gifted queen consorts as a very young woman nefetari had married a prince who would become one of egypt's most famous pharaohs is ramses second and it's quite impossible to go anywhere in egypt without bumping into him for he ruled longer built bigger and certainly boasted more than almost any other pharaoh in ancient egypt size is everything and ramses himself has accurately been described as the giant planet jupiter brilliant at a distance but essentially a ball of gas this really cuts to the heart of this policy of quantity over quality the bigger the better and this is wonderfully expressed by this statue here we can see ramses on a colossal scale while even his favorite wife nefertari clutches at the back of his leg not even as high as his knee so in order to find out more about her we have to travel beyond egypt's traditional boundaries so i'm going 400 kilometers south to tell a different side of this story to the temple of abu simbel as one of the most monumental examples of pharonic might it was built on the border with volatile nubia and was designed to strike fear and respect into all who sailed past along the nile toward egypt this is the temple of abu simbel built by ramses ii during his 67-year reign and it's typical of the man it's massive it's monumental and yet it's only one of the temples of taboo symbol in short it's only half the story the story i'm really interested in is next door within a temple dedicated for once not to ramses but to his wife hey um and here she is the great queen nefertari standing a colossal 33 feet tall and if you look very carefully you'll see she's just that little bit taller than her famous husband ramses ii because of the tall feather crown she's wearing built to make a statement the temple's towering size conveyed a strategic political message that puts nefertari at the heart of power and so for ramses to erect these massive statues of his wife he's really bringing into play every force at his disposal including the the good lady wife um the little woman at home quite literally but out here in nubia in the wilds of this desert landscape these volatile tribes people he needed her help and she was a very potent force her colossal striking image reveals that nefertari was the ultimate trophy wife sobel welcome [Music] in the interior of a temple nefertari appears in a variety of scenes performing a series of sacred rites taking an active role next to her husband she's got her arms raised she's encouraging her royal husband ramses who's in that classic pose of an egyptian pharaoh smiting the enemy basically this is a state execution they cower at his feet he holds them by the top of the head with the hair and once they're in that position he brings the weapon down on their head literally bashes out their brains and all the while nefertari on the sidelines is a kind of royal cheerleader if you like two sides of the same coin but of no less value than a husband it's a very very potent scene there is definitely no doubt that this was a royal double act [Music] egyptologist and abu symbol director dr ahmed salah has spent many years studying the images within both these temples is there enough information in the evidence we have to try and get an understanding of what they were like as a couple he loves here very much he married her before he ascended to the throne that means he had fallen in love with nefertari she accompanied him like a deputy [Music] yet it seems that when nefertari sailed this far south her health was fading fast the sad story here is nefertari didn't see her template she was sick she is staying in the boat maybe she can see the statues of her outside but she didn't come to inside her temple what a shame she could only view the exterior at least she saw her statues this is a sad story it is a sense yeah i think this is the last time of nefertari this is we are talking about the 24th year of his reign this is the last year of nefertari because when she go back to sleep i think she died and she buried there i'm traveling back north to get inside nefertari's tomb the place where i can find more evidence of the woman herself located in the valley of the queens its scenes are so delicate that access is limited i've just been given permission to personally unlock the tomb of nefatari the great royal wife of ramses ii and i'm really excited because this is an absolute gem of a tomb i've only ever seen it once before when i was much younger so this is going to be a rare treat that is a big key oh my word wow oh wow oh wow covering 520 square meters its brilliant jewel-like images vividly depict her journey into the hereafter the scenes just continue one after another after another there's nothing here left to chance nothing's thrown in simply as a little bit of pretty decoration it's like a machine functioning to keep nefatari's soul alive in the next world great attention was given to her appearance her eyes and eyebrows outlined in black a subtle red colour on her cheeks and lips and the most exquisite golden jewelry adorning her nefertari the loveliest of all her name implies incredible beauty and she really lives up to this this name that she has she's the ultimate high maintenance woman she was certainly beautiful but one particular wall scene chose nefatari in the company of thoth the god of knowledge and literacy who was selected for a reason we come to this wonderful scene which really ties in to what we know about nefertari in life nefetari's chosen to have the weighing of the heart the judgment of the dead scene from the book of the dead written out but illustrated in a rather unique manner because sheer hitch here she is she's having herself in the guise of a devotee of thoth the ibis-headed god of literacy and writing and the emphasis on writing can be seen on the scribal palette which stands between nefertari and the god thoth and then she's presenting herself before thought she says i am a scribe i am a scribe that's quite an emphatic statement not only beautiful this woman was pretty clever too as a royal wife she would of course have had scribes to write on her behalf but being able to read and write hieroglyphs was then regarded as the ultimate in academic achievement and nefatari made sure that her credentials would be clearly portrayed for posterity being the wife of such a domineering husband would also have required a considerable amount of gentle persuasion and soft power skills best shown in diplomatic correspondence exchanged with egypt's great rivals the hittites of anatolia in modern turkey nefertari is known to have corresponded with her opposite number in the hittite heartland the great queen put a heaper and it's amazing that one of these very letters has actually survived nefertari would have composed her own letter um in the egyptian language and then a bilingual scribe would have translated it into q a form and then embossed it on small clay tablets this is the exact letter that nefertari wrote to buddhahipa it's obviously a replica but it really gives a flavour of the very words of our great royal wife nefetaria it's full of warmth full of sisterly felicitations [Music] to my sister pudahipa great queen of the hittites may the sun god of egypt and the storm god of the hittites bring you joy and may the sun god make the peace good forever and at the very end is this very touching reference to the greeting gifts she's sending the hittite queen i've sent you a greeting gift my sister for your neck a necklace of pure gold and some colored linen to make a royal robe for your husband the king sending such greeting gifts to the monarchs with whom you corresponded played a crucial role in the diplomacy of the ancient world if we actually look at nefatari's ear we can see something which encapsulates this idea because regardless of all the gold all egyptian royals were dripping in gold everybody knew that gold was as common as dust in egypt you only have to pick it up wrote the ancient correspondence but in nefertaria is a silver earring a far more value not only that it isn't even an egyptian earring it's a style of greek hearing because these silver uh pieces of jewellery were sent to nefatari from the aegean area so in faraway greece they knew about nefertari and these earrings were sent to her and she wore them with great pride throughout her life so there's rather more to this uh jewelry and frocks business than it first meets the eye amidst such dual splendor nefatari was finally laid to rest in the manner in which she had lived in the most spectacular tomb in the whole of egypt i think one of the things that strikes you most emphatically when you catch your breath and calm down and start looking at these things in a more logical rather than an emotional way you suddenly realize that nephitary's husband's not here the great ramses is nowhere present he's on every temple throughout egypt he's everywhere and yet here in his wife's last resting place there isn't a single image of him now of course egyptologists have postulated many theories about why the great ramses wasn't actually portrayed in his wife's tomb i personally prefer to think that she herself thought well i've lived with him for so many years and in the next world it would be wonderful not to have to listen to him forever but whatever the real reason there's no doubting the importance and influence of nefertari as queen of one of egypt's best known [Music] pharaohs yet despite nefertari's best diplomatic efforts egypt's political fortunes were soon in sharp decline amidst rampant inflation and official corruption a long series of ephemeral rulers proved completely incapable of defending egypt's borders from wave after wave of foreign invaders throughout the first millennium bc and the most successful of these were the macedonian ptolemies who would change egypt's fortunes forever 900 years after nefertari a new era in egypt's history produced the first female pharaoh of the ptolemies arsinoe she capitalized on the success of the women rulers who'd gone before her arsinoe was able to bring together two worlds the egyptian and the greek building on a legacy inherited from the most famous greek of them all alexander the great everybody's heard of alexander the great who invaded egypt in 332 bc and was crowned pharaoh as shown in repeated scenes here alexander was then succeeded by his rumored half-brother ptolemy whose dynasty then went on to rule egypt for the last three centuries bc ptolemy in turn was succeeded by his extraordinary daughter are sinoway whose spectacular achievements were very consciously modelled on those of uncle alexander born in egypt the teenage arsinoe was sent to greece for an arranged royal marriage [Music] then at the death of her husband the king and a second disastrous marriage she fled for her life back to egypt but having acquired a taste for power arsinoe persuaded her younger brother the pharaoh to marry her he would be her route to the crown in one move arsinoe became ruler of two worlds egypt and the greek mediterranean through her international connections arsinoe brought more prosperity knowledge and wealth into egypt than almost any other ruler before her the bronze figure is all very interesting because you have our scenery almost giving the queenly wave if you like a very regal posture she's striking but look what she's carrying in her left arm it's a cornucopia which is a kind of greek uh pointed vessel but within it all the bounty the fruits the flowers the wealth of egypt and there isn't just one cornucopia but two she's bringing double the amount that anyone else can possibly bring arsinois spent much of this fortune in the new royal capital alexandria where her opulent lifestyle was sustained by a continuous flow of exotic imports from as far afield as india and even further east and as goods like ivory silk and jewels poured into the country the rest of the population thrived too as egypt became the greatest marketplace on earth that's okay hello hello marcel craig looking for some fabric oh that's beautiful because how much i'm sort of expressed okay well that's good so with commerce operating on such a vast scale arsinoe and her brother set up a sophisticated bureaucracy to manage the staggering wealth circulating within their empire now coinage finance plays a huge part in arsenal's story she was an extraordinary woman she had a huge personal fortune and her financial acumen was very much focused on egypt's own finances she and her brother husband ptolemy created a kind of doomsday style inventory of all egypt's assets she created royal monopolies on absolutely everything making sure that finance flowed directly into the royal house and in ancient egypt previously barter economy coinage played a crucial role it became increasingly common as a means of financial transactions pretty much it was the beginnings of capitalism under our sinoway egypt was once again a land of plenty and wealth and yet her coins had another very useful purpose as a means of circulating her agenda this coin shows arsinoe wearing the greek diadem crown and a veil over carefully styled hair pulled back into a bun at first appearance the epitome of a standard greek queen this is the perfect portrait of an elite greek matron very respectable looking very well coifed very well dressed and yet if you look really really closely just poking out in front of her here just looks like a a very tasteful little earring but it's actually a ramsar it's the rams horns of alexander the great arsinoe is using this very very subtle device to say i am the successor of the great alexander as his successor our cinema we built on the legacy of alexander whose emblems were the rams horns of egypt's state god a moon and so by adopting this symbol herself arsinoe was tapping into an ancient force this single subtle image confirming her place as the ruler of two worlds almost 200 kilometers south of luxor a remarkable site on an island in the middle of the nile gives a real sense of the power at arsenal's disposal now we know that every temple in egypt has statues of our sinoway as the resident goddess alongside their traditional deities [Music] but at feli she was also worshipped as the equivalent of isis herself the mother of all gods [Music] feli temple has rightly been dubbed the pearl of the nile it was the cult centre of the great goddess isis and in many ways it was kind of an outpost both in terms of its southerly geographical location and that this was the very last place in egypt where the ancient gods were worshiped as late as the 6th century a.d but not only was isis worshipped here our sinoway ii was the resident goddess in fact it was through the international influence of arsenal that isis goes global arsinoe's desire to be seen as the active goddess isis sent a very clear message to her [Music] subjects she had certainly played a fundamental role in shaping egypt both at home and abroad but arsenal's many achievements were only possible because of the countless generations of incredible women who'd gone before her and it's in one specific image she paid permanent tribute to all of them follow me this way here she is our sinnery pharaoh the goddess she's got all her regalia on that emphasizes just how much power this woman has and it's the crown the focus of so much recent research that can tell us so much we can even deconstruct it to tell arsenal's full story if we start with this crown this is the red crown it represents northern egypt and very much embodies the idea that arsinoe ruled from the royal capital alexandria on egypt's northern coastline next of all we have the two tall feathers at the top and the cow's horns as worn by the great royal wife nefertari wife of ramsay is the second and then we move on to the twisted rams horns of course various forms of ram's horns are associated with the great state god amon ra a favorite deity of hatshepsut and finally at the very heart of this very special crown there's sundisk the great creator of all life takes us right back to the pyramid age and hete perez the queen mother so by taking on this crown our sinoway is telling us she's taking on the accumulated powers of all these great women who were in power in egypt from so many centuries before her it's a wonderful thing with this crown later adopted by the great cleopatra herself these incredible women had been her guides as she extended egypt's power across so much of the ancient world [Music] i must say this journey for me has been an incredible opportunity to engage with ancient egypt in a new and very fresh way it's allowed me to investigate the lives of some incredible people for amazing women these women were incredible role models to all of us even in the modern world [Music] they were lovers mothers queens goddesses pharaohs they were incredibly strong they were incredibly capable and they underpinned the whole of this fantastic ancient civilization

Channel: Real Royalty

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Length: 58min 33sec (3513 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021