Revealing the Identify of the First Female Ruler of Egypt. Hint: It Was Not Hatshepsut

Today it is known that women appeared on the throne in ancient Egypt more often than many people believed just decades ago. The first known influential queens appeared with the first kings. This was long before the female pharaoh Hatshepsut took the throne. Their lives inspired queens until the fall of the ancient Egyptian civilization.

For a long time, Egyptologists believed that women became leaders a few centuries after the reign of the First Dynasty in ancient Egypt. However, information about powerful female rulers in the first dynasties eventually became a well-known fact. This provides a beautiful tale about strong and authoritative women in ancient Egypt.

Leaders Didn’t Have to be Men

It is commonly believed that to become a ruler in Egypt, women had to act like men, or even pretend to be male – as in the case of Queen Hatshepsut who ruled during the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom Period. However, the women from the first dynasties of Egypt had a different situation. They were mother-queens, rulers, and probably regents too. Although it is impossible to reconstruct all the details about their times, one can suppose that their position in their courts was strong.

Statue of Hatshepsut on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (CC BY-SA 3.0)