Hatshepsut came to power approximately 3,500 years ago and enjoyed a prosperous (and largely peaceful) 20-year reign, a time when Egypt was one of the richest countries on Earth.
During her reign, Hatshepsut initiated the construction of a number of temples and expanded others, the most well-known of which would be the temples at Karnak and Luxor. These projects helped perpetuate the religion of Amun and the cult of the royal family as deities.
Hatshepsut led several military campaigns (personally or from afar?). One campaign was launched against Nubia, which was located at Egypt’s southern border (today’s Sudan). Her victory there not only protected her southern border from invasion, but also allowed her troops to come with valuable trade goods such as gold, ivory, and incense.
Another military campaign took place in the Levant, a large area that today encompasses Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Syria. This campaign allowed Egypt to bring home timber and precious metals.
On the diplomacy front, Hatshepsut established diplomatic relations with powerful countries such as Punt, which was an important trading partner for goods such as incense, gold, leopard skins and baboons. For many years, Punt’s location was unknown to modern scholars and it achieved nearly-mythical status. Interestingly enough, DNA testing from mummified baboons places Punt primarily in the modern-day countries of Ethiopia, Dijbouti, and Eritrea.
But who was Hatshepsut? She was the daughter of Thutmose I and married Thutmose II, her half-brother. Hatshepsut only had one child, a girl named Neferure. Her co-regent and successor Thutmose III was actually a stepson, the son of one of Thutmose II’s other wives. Although she may have begun her reign as a regent for the young Thutmose III, Hatshepsut held on to power long after he came to adulthood, eventually outright declaring herself as pharoah after 20 years as regent. Hatshepsut is often portrayed with all the male trappings of the Pharoah: the false beard, the crook and flail, the male kilt, and the royal headdress. In other portrayals, she is more obviously female, wearing the less formal nekt headdress and a tight-fitting linen sheath. Another concession to her gender was that Hatshepsut never took on the title of Great Bull, as most pharoahs did. Instead, she associated herself with the lioness deity Sekhmet, a warrior goddess. During her reign she was known as Maatkare Hatshepsut, meaning “Maat is the Soul of Hatshepsut”.
Hatshepsut built a grand mortuary temple at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings. Most of her images were later defaced, either by Thutmose III in the last years of his own 20-year reign, or by Thutmose III’s son Amenhotep II. There are many theories as to why her grand statues were defaced. One is that Thutmose III decided to discourage other women from seeking the title of Pharoah. Another is that Amenhotep II had a shaky claim to the throne and was trying to shore up his candidacy by appropriating her accomplishments as his own (this latter was a not unusual practice among pharaohs).
The Temple Mount
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is probably one of the most hotly contested pieces of real estate in the world, and is one of the holiest sites in the world for all three of the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Temple Mount is the biblical Mount Moriah. It occupies about one-third of the original Old City of Jerusalem.
So let’s go back about 3,000 years. The biblical King David founded Jerusalem and brought the holy Ark of the Covenant there. The Ark, as all good Indiana Jones fans should know, was a wooden chest containing the two stones inscribed with the Ten Commandments. David’s son and successor, King Solomon, built the First Temple in approximately 1,000 BC and placed the Ark within it. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed the First Temple in 586 BC when he conquered the Jewish Kingdom of Judah. The Jews were driven out of Jerusalem, but they returned 30 years later and erected the Second Temple, which stood from 515 BC to 70 AD. This Second Temple is the one that existed during Jesus’ lifetime.
More on that in a minute. Let me go back even further in time, to the dawn of creation. There is a huge rock at the center of the Temple Mount called the Foundation Stone. It is believed that God took soil from this site to create Adam. About 4,100 years ago, c. 2100 BC, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac to prove his devotion. God didn’t make Abraham go through with the action, thankfully, but that event is mentioned in both Genesis 22:1-8 and in the Koran, Sura Al-Saffat 37:102-110. It, too, took place at the Foundation Stone.
Jesus visited the Second Temple several times during his lifetime. When Mary completed the 40-day ritual of purification after giving birth, she and Joseph took Jesus there for the ceremonial redemption of the firstborn (Luke 2:22-24). Then, you may remember, Jesus visited a temple at the age of 12 and was found sagely debating religious questions with his elders (Luke 2:46). That, too, is said to have happened at the Temple in Jerusalem. Later, he got angry at the merchandisers and money changers in His father’s house, so He threw them out and overturned their tables (Matthew 21:12). Finally, at the time of Jesus’ death, the veil in the Holy of Holies was “rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51).
Six centuries later, a new religion arose: Islam. In 610 AD, the angel Gabriel visited Mohammed and ordered him to speak Allah’s word. Beginning around 613 AD, Mohammed began doing just that, preaching throughout Mecca (in today’s Saudi Arabia) about the messages he had received.
Somewhere around the year 621 AD, Mohammed was visited again by the angel Gabriel, mounted a mighty white steed named Buraq, and was whisked away from Mecca to visit Jerusalem (“the farthest mosque”). During this Night Journey, he also ascended into heaven and met with seven prophets (one for each level of heaven, including Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, John the Baptist, and Jesus – though not necessarily in that order). It was during this visit that God instructed Mohammed to have Muslims pray five times per day. The location of this “farthest mosque” is traditionally held to be the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is also upon the site of the Temple Mount (but not at the Foundation Stone, which today is the site of the Dome of the Rock). The Muslim holiday Isra and Mi’raj (with Isra representing the journey to Jerusalem and Mi’raj the ascent into heaven and praying with the prophets) is one of the most important holidays in the Islamic calendar (it was held on March 21-22 in 2020).
So we now have the Temple Mount as a site that’s important to Jews, Christianity, and Islam. Because of Mohammed’s Night Journey, a small prayer house was erected at the south end of the Temple Mount in 705 AD. Buildings on that location were destroyed by earthquake and rebuilt and enlarged several times, but the most recent, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, was constructed in 1035 AD. It is considered the third holiest site in Islam. My personal favorite, though, is the gold-domed building in the center of the Temple Mount that graces every postcard in Jerusalem and houses the Foundation Stone. Located where the First and Second Temples once stood, the Muslims erected a shrine over the Foundation Stone in 691 or 692 AD to protect it from vandalism and souvenir hunters. Although the original dome collapsed in 1015 and had to be rebuilt in 1022 or 1023 AD, its core is considered to be one of the oldest still-existing pieces of Islamic architecture. It’s certainly stunning with its colorful mosaics and golden dome.
But wait, there’s more: After the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099, the Dome of the Rock was converted into a church and called Templum Domini (the Temple of the Lord) and Al-Aqsa became a church called Templum Solomonis (Solomon’s Temple). The southeast corner of the Temple Mount is still referred to as Solomon’s Stables. Somewhere around the year 1119, it formed the headquarters for the powerful Knights Templar. The two Christian churches were reconverted back into Muslim houses of worship after Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 and have remained so ever since.
Going forward nearly eight centuries, Jordan retained control of the Temple Mount after the Israeli War for Independence. Jordan refused to allow any Jews to have access to the site. In 1967, during the Six Day War, the Israeli Defense Forces recaptured Jerusalem and claimed Jewish control over the Temple Mount area for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple 1900 years previously. To avoid bloodshed, the governing agreement today is that an Islamic religious committee, called a Waqf, manages the Temple Mount site and Israeli forces provide security and uphold the decisions made by the Waqf. Tensions have flared periodically (including as recently as 2017), especially when one side or another fears that the governing agreement is about to be broached by the other side. During our visit in February, however, everything was peaceful.
February 18, 2020