“Throughout world history, for a variety of reasons, people have erased powerful women, both literally and figuratively, both during their lifetimes and after their deaths. In Hatshepsut’s case, her late husband’s son did it by destroying her statues. Literal erasure. Other female pharaohs remained undiscovered for centuries because archaeologists assumed they must be men. Figurative erasure. One could even argue that Hatshepsut erased herself in the later statues she commissioned, although I think the issue is more complicated than that.”
