Hatshepsut's Relationship To The God Amun

Hatshepsut’s reign as pharaoh strongly emphasised her close relationship and devotion to the god Amun. According to Lawless, Hatshepsut did more than any other Pharaoh to raise the status of Amun beyond all other gods. She achieved this by emphasising her filial relationship with the god, most evident in the divine birth scene in her mortuary temple at Deir El Bahri and through the Oracle, which was later inscribed on the walls of the Red Chapel at Karnak. These pieces of evidence are vital in explaining Hatshepsut’s devotion to Amun. However, the relationship between Hatshepsut and Amun was a reciprocal arrangement as through the glorification of her father she promoted the priesthood and rewarded them for their support towards her legitimacy which led to their growth in wealth and political power during her reign.

The king promoted Amun as the state cult and appointed the chief priest who, in his turn, supported the king. The king’s royal wife, as his chief consort, played an influential role in the Priesthood as God’s wife of Amun. This religious role was an important step in Hatshepsut’s rise to prominence. The highest-ranking female in the land was the ‘kings-great wife’ and in the early New Kingdom Hatshepsut also exercised great influence in her role as ‘God’s Wife of Amun’. Her role as God’s Wife of Amun, while she was the chief consort of Thutmose II, would have gained her the support of the Amun priesthood. Many of these had also been supporters of her father, Thutmose I, and so were likely to have transferred their support to his