h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I like the fact that the expert commenting on a female pharaoh is called Breasted.

Yes, I noticed that as well

(Although it's not quite the same thing, there's a word that describes a persons surname as being suitable to their job. 'New Scentist' once went through a phase of publishing many examples of them. When I was working in a Research institute, the safety officer was Dr Death )

i think her name is Hapshepsut.. not Hatshepsup...

She was Hatshepsut until she became a Pharaoh. At that point she changed her name to the male version, Hatshepsup.

really? wow.. cool. so how does that make it a male name

-t was the female ending in Egyptian, so she had to remove the t from the end and put something else there. It's a bit like someone called "Victoria" changing their name to "Victor".

but nefertari and nefertiti weren't ending in t... unless vowels don't count

'... so how does that make it a male name..'

This is what IN said in the Entry:

'Originally named Hatshepsut, meaning 'foremost of the noble ladies',...

and...


'As a queen taking on full status as a pharaoh she needed additional official appellations and so she became King Maatkara Hatshepsut-Khnemet-Amen. She even eventually dropped the feminine 't' suffix to her name thus becoming, in effect, His Majesty King Maatkara Hatshepsup-Khnemet-Amen ('foremost of the nobles').'



In the case of Nefertiti, if indeed she became pharaoh, she changed her name completely to Smenkhkare. She didn't just change the ending of her name.

-a is a common ending for modern female names in English, from the Latin feminine ending. So we have Maria, Julia, Brenda and so on. But not all female names end in -a.

In Egyptian, most people with names ending in t were female, so Hatshepsut decided to change her name. Nefertiti had a name which didn't end in t but was still obviously a female name.

this is a very good article indeed.. a bit dissapointing though, coz i for some reason thought she was thin and beautiful..
her temple is surely one of the top sites in egypt..
only one thing. where is the mummy of hapshepsut now? i don't remmember it being in the Egyptian Museum

Well, I imagine she is in the Cairo Museium now - but she would only've been there since this year.

'...for some reason thought she was thin and beautiful.. '

As I said in the Entry, Hatshepsup described herself as being 'beautiful and blooming'.

It seems to me that few of the Egyptian pharaohs and Queens were as attractive as they were made out to be, and this includes Tutankhamun.

Hands up who hasn't picked the best photo of themselves to display.