The Female Pharaoh You’ve Never Heard Of

Long before Cleopatra, a woman ruled Egypt for 25 years. Her name was Hatshepsut and she was the first woman to ever become pharaoh.

A female pharaoh!

But 20 years after she died, someone tried to erase her from history. Statues of her were smashed, and her name was removed from whatever they could find it.

Because, you know, a female pharaoh freaked people out.

What if her success encouraged other women to seek power?

But thankfully it’s not so easy to hide the memory of someone immortalized in stone. There were enough traces left of Hatshepsut to figure out who and what she was when modern archeologists began coming across the ancient clues.

This video tells the whole fascinating story:

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Originally published at timbuktu.me on November 18, 2015.