Hatshepsut's royal title is Ma'at-ka-Ra (The Spirit of Ra, God of the Sun)

Her maiden name, Hatshepsut, means the Foremost of Noble Ladies. As one of the earliest known queens regnant in Ancient Egypt, she ruled under stable political and economic conditions, in what is known to have been Egypt's Golden Age, namely the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom.

Hatshepsut's Achievements

 • Hatshepsut reestablished the trade networks that had been disrupted during the Hyksos occupation of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.

• Under her reign, the copper mines in Sinai were re-worked.

• She marked Love Day which coincided with her accession to the throne.

• In the fashion of the pharaohs, the masterpiece of Hatshepsut's building projects was her mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahari. It was designed and implemented by Senemut on a site on the West Bank of the Nile River near the entrance to what is now called the Valley of the Kings because of all the pharaohs who chose to associate their complexes with the grandeur of hers. Her buildings were the first planned for that location. The focal point was the Djeser-Djeseru or "the Sublime of Sublimes", a colonnaded structure of perfect harmony nearly one thousand years before the Parthenon was built. Djeser-Djeseru sits atop a series of terraces that were once graced with lush gardens. Djeser-Djeseru is built into a cliff face that rises sharply above it. Djeser-Djeseru and the other buildings of Hatshepsut's Deir el-Bahari complex are considered to be among the great buildings of the ancient world.

Hatshepsut's accession to the throne

Hatshepsut was the elder daughter of Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose, the first king and queen of the Thutmosid clan of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Upon the death of her father in 1493 BC, Hatshepsut married her half-brother, Thutmose II, and she assumed the title of Great Royal Wife. Thutmose II ruled Egypt for either 3 or 13 years, during which time it was believed that Queen Hatshepsut exerted a strong influence over her husband.

 People of importance to the Queen

• Hatshepsut's daughter with Thutmose II: Neferure. Hatshepsut may have groomed Neferure as the heir apparent, commissioning official portraits of her daughter wearing the false beard of royalty and the side-lock of youth. Neferure however, died in her youth, causing her mother to grieve.

• Senenmut: The architect who built her Deir al-Bahari mortuary temple

• Sitre In: Hatshepsut's wet nurse.

DNA confirms Hatshepsut's mummy

Egyptologists at the University of Manchester have carried out a DNA test on the mummy discovered by an Egyptian archaeological team earlier, and confirmed that it did belong to Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's greatest female pharaoh.

An archaeological team led by Zahi Hawwas, Egypt's Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, recently located her mummy in Luxor's Valley of the Kings, following a one-year study.

They used CT scans to link distinct physical traits of Queen Hatshepsut to that of her ancestors, and narrow the search for the Pharaoh to the couple of female mummies in the KV60 tomb.