Bøger af Kara Cooney

Explores the lives of five pharaohs who ruled Egypt with absolute power, shining a new light on the country's 3,000-year empire and its meaning today

In today's political landscape, women rulers are rare. However, thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, women were pharaohs who controlled an authoritarian state in times of war and peace. Despite their success, they often ended up being used as mere pawns in a patriarchal society. By studying the lives of six remarkable pharaohs-including Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra-renowned Egyptologist Kara Cooney explains how these women ruled and what made ancient Egypt unique among the great empires of history. An extraordinary testimony that sheds light on the complexities of their unusual power and explains why nothing like it has ever been seen since. But what was so special about ancient Egypt that women had access to the highest political offices? What was it about these women that enabled them to overcome the obstacles to the throne?

A meticulous study of the social, economic, and religious significance of coffin reuse and development during the Ramesside and early Third Intermediate periods Funerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology, and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties have not been fully utilized in this regard, mostly because the data of this time period is scattered and difficult to synthesize. This culmination of fifteen years of coffin study analyzes coffins and other funerary equipment of elites from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-second Dynasties to provide essential windows into social strategies and adaptations employed during the Bronze Age collapse and subsequent Iron Age reconsolidation. Many of the Twentieth to the Twenty-second Dynasty coffins show evidence of reuse from other, older coffins, as well as obvious marks where gilding or inlay have been removed. Innovative vignettes painted onto coffin surfaces reflect new religious strategies and coping mechanisms within this time of crisis. Advances in mummification techniques meanwhile reveal an Egyptian anxiety about long-term burial without coffins as a new style of stuffed and painted mummy was developed for the wealthy, and a complex coffin style emerged due to long-term burial without painted tomb chapels. The first part of this book focuses on the theory and evidence of coffin reuse and the social collapse that characterized the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties, while the second part presents a collection of photo-essays of annotated visual data for about a hundred Egyptian coffins, most of them from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

This narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs and shines a light on our perceptions of women in power today.

Hatshepsut, the daughter of a general who had usurped the throne of Egypt, was born into a privileged position within the royal household. Married off to her own brother, she was expected to bear sons who would legitimize the reign of her father's family. But she failed to produce a male heir. Such was the twist of fate that paved the way for her own scarcely believable rule: she ascended to the throne as a ';king'. Over a spectacular twenty-two-year reign, Hatshepsut proved herself a master strategist, cloaking her political power plays with a veil of piety and sexual reinvention. Just as women today face obstacles from a society that equates authority with masculinity, Hatshepsut had to operate the levers of a patriarchal system to emerge as Egypt's second female pharaoh. Scholars have long speculated as to why her images were violently destroyed within a few decades of her death, all but erasing evidence of her rule. Constructing a rich narrative history using the sources that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated powerand why she fell from public favour just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of a female pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.