Zahi Hawass on archaeology: what the evidence says · JRE #2321
SUBJECT: ARCHAEOLOGY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
The ancient Egyptians believed that a pharaoh should be a male. A pharaoh cannot be a female. Anyone who changed the religious belief, they hit him. Hatshepsut, when she became a pharaoh, they hit her, and they destroyed her monuments.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
It is well established that Hatshepsut, one of Egypt's few female pharaohs, was subject to a posthumous campaign of erasure: her successor Thutmose III had her images defaced, her statues broken, her name chiseled from monuments, and her rule removed from official king lists. On that core fact Hawass is correct. His stated motive, that a pharaoh could not be female and so she was struck down for it, is the older popular narrative that modern Egyptology largely qualifies or rejects. The erasure did not begin until roughly two decades after Hatshepsut's death, which undercuts a simple gender or revenge explanation, and specialists now emphasize political and dynastic aims such as securing a clean line of male succession from Thutmose I through III to Amenhotep II. A 2025 study in Antiquity by Jun Yi Wong further argues that much of the statue damage reflects routine ritual deactivation and later reuse rather than targeted destruction, though scholars agree a real proscription campaign occurred and its precise motive remains debated. In short, the destruction is real but framing it as simply because she was female overstates a contested point.