Hatshepsut and Her Ships: Watercraft as Intentional Symbols of Power in Dynastic Egypt

Abstract

This study evaluates the symbolic importance of depictions of royal watercraft in ancient Egypt, highlighting royal decision-making evident from two sets of mortuary temple reliefs: those of the Old Kingdom pharaoh Sahure (reigned ca. 2487-2475 BCE) and those of the New Kingdom pharaoh Hatshepsut (reigned ca. 1479-1458 BCE). It has long been acknowledged that Hatshepsut's Deir el Bahri mortuary temple reliefs depicting an expedition to Punt seem to have explicitly drawn upon Sahure's Punt reliefs from Abusir, even though almost a thousand years separate the two pharaohs. This study offers a reexamination of the full corpus of royal watercraft reliefs from Hatshepsut and Sahure's mortuary complexes, to better understand Hatshepsut's innovations in adapting Sahure's expedition to Punt scenes. These reliefs are further contextualized through analysis of contemporary remains of watercraft (including full-sized boat burials and symbolic replicas like model boats), the history of trade between Egypt and Punt, and other iconographic evidence like astronomical ceiling paintings from 18th Dynasty royal and elite tombs. I argue that both pharaohs' watercraft depictions seem to visually reference divine solar barques, emphasizing a link between divine and royal ship "captains" and the importance of watercraft in ancient Egyptian cosmology. When analyzed through the lens of Memory Studies, Hatshepsut's decision-making around organizing an expedition to Punt, depicting watercraft adornment in the reliefs, their placement within her mortuary complex, and other elements of her iconographic program reveal the ways she attempted to use watercraft to legitimize her rule and celebrate her royal success.