Ancient Egypt breakthrough as 100-year-old female pharaoh mystery solved

Over the past 100 years, historians were left puzzled over one of ancient Egypt's most powerful and fascinating rulers' statues. Queen Hatshepsut was the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, ruling first as regent, then as queen regnant from 1479 BC until 1458 BC.

When Queen Hatshepsut, one of ancient Egypt's only two female rulers, died, it was widely believed that her nephew, Thutmose III, ordered for her statues to be defaced and destroyed to erase her from history. However, a new study published in Antiquity by Jun Yi Wong offers a fascinating new perspective. The Egyptology researcher at the University of Toronto, Hatshepsut's broken statues were not personal or political but were actually in line with rituals and traditions at the time, and not a sign of disrespect or displeasure with her reign.

Wong studied records dating back to the 20s and 30s and examined thousands of pieces of statues uncovered during the 1922-1928 Metropolitan Museum of Art excavations.

During the study, Wong found that the statues were not smashed in the face and didn't have their inscriptions destroyed - the usual markers of desecration. Instead, they were broken at their neck, waist and feet which appears to be process that modern-day Egyptologists call "ritual deactivation."

Wong's belief that the statues were not destroyed in a personal vendetta reshapes archaeologists' understanding of ancient Egyptian religious and political practices.

Wong, whose research was published in the journal Antiquity, said: "One of the best-known finds in the history of Egyptian archaeology is the Karnak Cachette, where hundreds of statues of pharaohs - from across centuries - were found in a single deposit. The vast majority of the statues have been 'deactivated."

However, this isn't to say that Hatshepsut wasn't a target of political persecution after her death.

"There is no doubt that Hatshepsut did suffer a campaign of persecution - at many monuments throughout Egypt, her images and names have been systematically hacked out," Wong said.

Wong added: "We know that this campaign of persecution was initiated by Thutmose III, but we are not exactly sure why."