Audacious Royalty Archives - Kathleen Colvin, Author

Did Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti (c. 1370 – c. 1330 BC) Need Glamour?

I’m hesitating over an email from a real estate agent pressing us to meet. She was recommended to help us buy a new home, and yet I have misgivings. The agent’s marketing photos show her in high heels and short dresses. She exudes glamour.

Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti has glamour. She and Pharaoh Amenhotep IV took the unusual step of moving the capital of Egypt out of the historical city of Thebes to a new city built along the Nile River. More astonishing, they tried to turn Egypt from worshiping many gods to a single god.

But old habits die hard. After the pharaoh passed, the capital moved back to Thebes and everyone went back to worshiping the old gods.

We don’t know if Nefertiti ruled as queen by herself after the pharaoh died. We do know about her for a different reason. She’s called the “Mona Lisa” of the ancient world because of a discovery of a painted, stucco-coated bust depicting her extraordinary beauty.

Is it really what she looked like? The bust, if you look closely, has an impossibly long neck. In 2009, CT scans showed that underneath the painted stucco is a more realistic limestone carving of a woman with wrinkles and a bump on her nose. So maybe Nefertiti was using ancient world photoshopping.

Queens might need to look a certain way to instill a following. But do real estate agents? My personal choice is for an agent who has smarts.

Cleopatra (69 BC – 30 BC) Was More Than a Sex Kitten

I step around a cluster of women at the gym, each trying to gain attention by wearing as little as possible.

It’s the latest thing at my gym. I wonder what happened to focusing on increasing strength and endurance, not gathering looks from others.

Cleopatra ruled Egypt for 21 years. She knew how to build a fleet, quell an insurrection, and control the money. Despite the male-dominated world, a Roman general praised her political smarts.

Yet our memory of her is largely based on her romance with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. When Shakespeare wrote his play about her relationship with Marc Anthony, he depicted her as scholar Harold Bloom says “the most seductive woman in all of Shakespeare.”

Today her name is associated with a strip club and a slot machine, both portraying her as a sexual vamp, not a political power. When I searched the words “Cleopatra” and “sex kitten,” plenty of websites came up with that combination.

It’s okay that women want to show off their bodies. But should this be all those women in my gym focus on?

How the Heck Did Cleopatra Become Queen?

We all know that throughout the ages, it’s tough for women to get the job as chief monarch.

It usually occurs because there’s no other male heirs. This is the case of the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II.

For Cleopatra, there was plenty of other choices. She was co-regent with her younger brother, who was about ten years old at the time when Cleopatra’s father died. Another younger brother was also in the pipeline. Other relatives from neighboring regions must have been eager for the job.

A ten year old is easy to bamboozle, but not if he’s guided by three powerful adult advisers. These advisors were plenty successful too, forcing Cleopatra to flee Egypt before the time when Julius Caesar made his home in the Alexandria palace and called a truce between the two siblings.

Cleopatra is on the list of the most well-known women in history. How did she learn the skills of statecraft? Of political survival?

Sure, she was intelligent, speaking at least nine languages. But a woman has to have learn from someone.

That’s what I want to know, but I don’t have the answer right now. I’m researching it, reading academic journal articles.

I haven’t found a scholar who seems to have tackled this question, so I’ll make my own theories. Because no woman gets to be that powerful without someone helping her.

Is Warrior Queen Boudica (30 AD-61 AD) Just Another Sexpot?

British historian Bettany Hughes in a London Evening Standard article this week said that despite misleading portrayals in movies and on tv of powerful women, “the world never had this many sexpots.”

Hughes has created a tv production company to counter the notion that powerful women in the past were “super-sexual.”

Portrait of Boadica Haranguing The Britons by John Opie — Here Boudica is portrayed leading men

Beauty and sex appeal are seen as going hand in hand. When I wrote my post “Do We Demand That Cleopatra be Good-Lookin’?”, I was surprised at the number of people who assumed that Cleopatra must have been beautiful to attract Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. Contemporaneous coins of the time suggest she wasn’t attractive.

Hughes includes Boudica as a woman who is trivialized to be a sexpot. I don’t see how anyone could think of Boudica that way. After all, any queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe who fights against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire is too busy to be a sexpot.

Still, commenting on a woman’s looks is a way to reduce her power, even back then. Boudica had to have discipline, strategic thinking, and an ability to lead an army. Cassius Dio, an ancient Greek writer, also had to note that “a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips.”

I’m trying to remember when an ancient historian mentioned the hairstyle of a male enemy.

Hughes has a job ahead of her. But I’m glad she’s willing to undertake the challenge.

Because even the History Channel’s video on Boudica shows she has attractive white teeth.

Why is 91-year old Queen Elizabeth II a Strong Woman?

Queen Elizabeth II is a strong woman. At 91 years old, she’s kept the same job she’s had for 65 years.

Her son, Prince Charles, is 68 years old. He has long given up the idea that he’ll get the throne. Her husband, Prince Philip, is 96 years old, and he announced this year that he will no longer make public appearances. In other words, he’s not playing the role of her companion in public any more.

Queen Elizabeth Visiting the United States in 2007 — Queen Elizabeth with a one of her signature hats

Queen Elizabeth saw England being bombed and almost falling to Germany during World War II.

With World War II raging, the 18-year-old Elizabeth begged her father to let her help the war effort by serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, a branch of the British Army. It must have made an impact on her. She would have been able to see the sacrifices necessary to win the war. While the Territorial Service women were not sent to battle, they undertook support tasks and were still at risk.

In 1947, a few years after the end of the war, Queen Elizabeth very practically used ration coupons to pay for the material for her wedding gown. It was not a lavish ceremony.

Her life still demands quick thinking against an opponent. In 1981, during her birthday celebration parade, she was shot by a teenager while she rode her horse. Fortunately the teenager fired blanks and was arrested. The Queen calmed her horse and continued the parade.

A year later, she awoke to find a man in her bedroom dripping blood from a cut hand. She calmly chatted with him about his family until a footman seized the intruder.

Over the last few decades, many have speculated that the queen will retire, and each time, they’ve been proven wrong. I’m glad. I like to think of a strong woman at the helm of England’s monarchy.

Want more information about what makes Queen Elizabeth different? Read “8 Things You May Not Know About Queen Elizabeth II.”

Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut (1507 BC – 1458 BC) Had Trouble Being a Woman in Charge

I recently picked up the book Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace . One of the strategies author Jessica Bennett discusses in the book is watching your language. Words like “nag,” “kiddo,” and “psycho” are laden with anti-woman slurs.

Ancient Egyptian queen Hatshepsut is well known for her exquisite funerary temple in Thebes. Having a great landmark while you’re in the afterlife was one perk of being in charge. But like women bosses today, Hatshepsut had to fight expectations that the person who ruled Egypt was male.

She tried various ways to make a woman ruler seem natural in Ancient Egypt. She had statutes carved to depict herself as a man. She then tried female epithets and applied them to male statues in order to feminize her ancestors.

Sometimes she just gave up and called it straight: She was a daughter of the sun god Ra (rather than the son of Ra) and the Lady of Two Lands (rather than the Lord of Two Lands).

Words describing her as a female monarch must felt wrong. Finally her advisors came up with the word “pharaoh” to be the name of Egypt’s ruler, regardless of gender.

Ancient Egypt called their monarchs pharaohs ever since. But we still are looking for good solutions to our own gender-biased language.

Thanks to Toby Wilkinson’s book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.

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