This episode was probably decades in the making if I am being honest. As a young kid, I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt. My dad worked as the executive chef at the St. Louis Art Museum for a time, and every time he brought me into work, I would dash off to the Egyptian wing, learning as much as I could. I knew about the mummification process, what jars held what organs, why the tombs were made they way they were, and even taught myself how to draw hieroglyphics.

It was only a small time later that I started learning about some of the well-known kings and pharaoh’s of ancient Egypt, like King Tut and Ramses, but little would be illuminated to me about the women of ancient Egypt. While the mummy that is in the STL Art Museum (Amen-Nestawy-Nakht) is a priest of Amun, the same deity that Hatshepsut worshipped and whose cult she breathed her very life into after ascension to the throne, Hatshepsut isn’t mentioned at all at the museum. Of course this particular mummy was from the 22nd dynasty, but for a little girl like me, gleaning any knowledge about female rulers would have made me love this exhibit even more.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-six and traveled to Berlin that I got to see the famous bust of Nefertiti, but it was then that I knew that this podcast (if I every really did get down to making it) would have at least one episode a season dedicated to the amazing women of ancient history that were woefully forgotten or swept under the rug.

The books I read by Kara Cooney were tantamount to the creation of this episode, and her works really brought Hatshepsut, and ancient Egypt in general) to life, and I want to specifically shout out this amazing Egyptologist and writer. I can’t wait to finish her other works as I do my research for the next Egyptian ruler, and must recommend them for anyone that has a remote interest in that time period, the belief system, or what ancient Egyptian life was like.