Why Did Ancient Egyptians Shatter Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s Statues? The Chilling Truth Revealed
So, here’s a wild thought: what if those infamous smashed statues of Queen Hatshepsut aren’t simply the result of some epic sibling rivalry or a royal “I hate you” tantrum? For nearly a century, history textbooks and archaeologists alike have pointed a suspicious finger at her stepson, Thutmose III, blaming him for wrecking her statues because, well, she was a rare female pharaoh and, apparently, hard to love. But hold your horses—new research is flipping that dusty old script on its head. It turns out, the broken statues might not be about spite or scandal at all, but about mystical “deactivation ceremonies” to snuff out their supernatural mojo… and maybe some good old-fashioned recycling for building materials later on. Intrigued yet? Because I sure am. Ready to dive into a tale of pharaohs, power plays, and puzzling stone busts? You’re about to discover that sometimes, history isn’t just rewritten—it’s cracked into pieces and put back together tellin’ a very different story. LEARN MORE
For the last century, experts had largely assumed that many statues of Hatshepsut were broken during antiquity because she was a rare female ruler and because her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, despised her and wanted to tarnish her legacy.
Harry Burton/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Egyptian Art ArchivesFragments of a limestone Hatshepsut statue circa 1929.
When archaeologists began excavating the Deir el-Bahri necropolis near Luxor, Egypt in the 1920s, they discovered a number of smashed and destroyed statues of the same ancient pharaoh.
This pharaoh, Hatshepsut, was one of the few women to serve as the ruler of ancient Egypt. Ever since these broken statues were found, archaeologists have largely believed that they had been violently destroyed on the orders of her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, because he despised her.
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