By Yoon Joung Lee There have been four female pharaohs total in Ancient Egypt. Although Cleopatra was the most well-known female pharaoh, Hatshepsut had the most powerful influence from 1508 to 1458 BC. Hatshepsut was the fifth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt. Hatshepsut married Thutmosis II, but the marriage didn’t produce children. However, Thutmosis’s secondary wife, Isis, produced a son named Thutmosis III. However, his father, Thutmosis II, died when he was only 12 years old. Since Thutmosis III was too young to become a ruler, Hatshepsut assumed the role of regent on his behalf and the length of her reign was 22 years, which was much longer than any other female pharaohs in Ancient Egypt. Her era is considered to be a prosperous and a long peaceful era. There is no suggestion of military activities on her part. However, some history experts say that what we can find about her today may not be all since many of her texts are defaced, amended, or erased after her death. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that her war record is incomplete. She re-built trading relationships that were lost during a foreign occupation. This re-establishment of trading networks brought great wealth to the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. This wealth enabled her to pursue hundreds of construction projects in both Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. She had monuments constructed at the Temple of Karnak. She built twin obelisks which were the tallest at that time in the world. She also built another project called Karnak’s Red Chapel which stood between her two obelisks. The Temple of Pakhet was built by her at Beni Hasan in the Minya Governorate south of Al Minya. However, the masterpiece of her building projects was her mortuary temple built in a complex at Deir eil-Bahri. This temple is at a site on the West Bank of the Nile River. Her buildings including Deir eil-Bahri are considered to be a significant advance in architecture. After 22 years of competent rule, she left the scene. She died 9 months into her 22nd regal? year as king. There is no record about the cause of her death. Although her mummy has never been positively identified, the medical evidence with her assumable mummy indicates that she suffered from diabetes and died by bone cancer. Many experts also assume that she might not have received an honorable burial because her coffin has been preserved. Please explain a little how an honorable burial depends on the coffin. Around at the end of the reign of Thutmose III and the time of his son’s reign, there were some attempts to eliminate Hatsheput's historical and pharaonic records. Her images and sculptures were chiseled of from some stone walls, and her numerous statues at the Deir el-Bahri were torn down, smashed, or disfigured before being buried in a pit. It is unclear why this happened, but we can only assume that there were some counter-powers against her. Amenhotep II became a co-regent of Thutmose III before his death. Amenhotep is suspected to be the defacer during the end of reign of Hashpetsut. He is documented as having usurped many of Hatchepsut’s accomplishments during his own reign. Although many of her records are missing or destroyed, her great works as a female ruler are still complemented by people worldwide. Her monument is still filled with today’s scholars and tourists. With admiration, these people are not only there for visiting historical monuments themselves, but for remembering a remarkable female pharaoh who was responsible for their construction and her capable leadership of the great Egyptian Empire. By Yoon Joung Lee A pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian, Clara Barton, was born in 1832 in Oxford, Massachusetts. She was the youngest child of five in a middle-class family. Her father, Stephen Barton, was a farmer and horse breeder and her mother, Sarah Barton, managed the household. When she was 12, her brother David fell from a rafter in their unfinished barn. For 3 years, she stayed at his side and took care of him as her first patient. During this time, she learned to administer all his medicines, and became interested in the field of nursing. In 1861, her lifetime of philanthropy began as she organized a relief program to obtain and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers after the First Battle of Bull Run during the Civil War. This independent organization, advertising for donations in the Worcester, Mass., Spy, was established when she learned many wounded soldiers from the battle had suffered from need of medical supplies. And this relief program was successful. The following year, U.S. Surgeon General William A. Hammond allowed her to ride in army ambulances to provide comfort to the soldiers and nurse them back to health. For 3 years, she followed army operations reaching the actual battlefields of the war during the Siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia. There, she cared for the casualties from the Battle of the Wilderness and also did nursing work at Bermuda Hundred. In 1884, she was appointed as superintendent of nurses at the front of the Army of the James, by Union General Benjamin Butler. In 1865, in President Abraham Lincoln’s command, she became in charge of the search for the missing soldiers of the Union Army. She was able to find out the status of missing men and notify their families as she interviewed with Federals returning from Southern prisons. At the end of the war, she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland. There, she was introduced to the Red Cross. When she came back to the States, she led a movement to gain recognition for the International Red Cross by the United States government. In 1881, she finally founded the new American Red Cross in Dansville, N.Y. and became President of the American branch of the society. She resigned as head of the organization in 1904. She spent the rest of her life at her hometown, Glen Echo, outside Washington, D.C., and passed away in 1912. |
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