During those two decades, Hatshepsut began to wear the traditional Pharaonic false beard and other accoutrements of office, and men's clothing with body armor to conceal her breasts and other female attributes, as she can be seen in statues created at Deir el-Bahari, her mortuary temple. She also changed her name, giving it a masculine rather than a feminine ending, and became "His Majesty, Hatshepsu." In other words, she ruled as a man, a male pharaoh, not simply as a regent. As a result, she is now considered to be one of the most illustrious women from ancient Egypt, along with Nefertiti and Cleopatra. Hatshepsut apparently never remarried after Thutmose II died, but may have taken her architect and chief steward, Senenmut, as a lover; an image of him was carved, perhaps secretly, on Hatshepsut's funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari, whose construction he oversaw.
1177B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed, Eric H. Cline
