This graceful, life-size statue depicts Hatshepsut in female attire, but she wears the nemes–headcloth, a royal attribute usually reserved for the reigning king. In the columns of text inscribed beside her legs on the front of the throne, she has already adopted the throne name Maatkare, but her titles and epithets are still feminine. Thus, she is “Lady of the Two Lands” and “Bodily Daughter of Re.”

The pose of the statue, seated with hands flat on the knees, indicates that it was intended to receive offerings and it was probably placed in one of the Temple’s chapels. In more public areas, such as the processional way into the temple, colossal sphinxes, kneeling and standing statues represent Hatshepsut as the ideal king, a young man in the prime of life. This does not mean that she was trying to fool anyone into thinking that she was a man. She was merely following traditions established more than 1500 years earlier. [X]