Which Egyptian Queen made the greatest contribution to her country?
Hatshepsut or Cleopatra?
Pharaonic and Ptolemaic Egypt were ruled by a "king," and the Egyptian ideal of succession was from father to son (Shaw, 2003). The female relatives of the ruling king often played significant roles in the rule of Egypt, and the ideology of kingship itself was a careful blend of both male and female elements. Women who ruled autonomously as king were unusual in Dynastic Egypt, but it did occur; the best-known examples of this are Hatshepsut (from the 18th Dynasty) and Cleopatra VII (from the Ptolemaic period) (Tyldesley, 1995).
Hatshepsut, the fifth ruler of the 18th Dynasty, was the daughter of Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose. …
