The Ancient Artifacts That Honor Egypt’s Powerful Leaders

Female leaders have led civilizations throughout history. For several centuries, the men of ancient Egypt have received most of the attention, but it’s no secret that women have also ruled over ancient Egypt. “Queens of Egypt,” the latest expo at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., features the extraordinary ways women have handled power in the land of the colossal pyramids.

The exhibit boasts of over 300 ancient Egyptian artifacts on full display—from Ushabti to Queen Nefertiti’s grave to statues rendering Sekhmet, the leonine goddess of battle. More so, the exhibit illustrates an immense number of ways that ancient Egyptians praised and worshiped their female leadership.

Bastet was considered as the Egyptian goddess of joy, dance, and music. She was often described as a cat. One of the most widely known artifacts discovered in Egypt is the sculpture of Nefertiti’s head. This is a life-sized replica of the original, which was unearthed from a sculptor’s workshop back in 1912.

Kara Cooney, professor of Egyptology at the University of California in Los Angeles, shares her deep understanding of this natural phenomenon in her newly released book When Women Ruled. Cooney’s assessment of women strength profiles six ancient leaders that include Cleopatra, Tawosret, Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, and Nefertiti, and the living power framework that allowed them to rule thousands of years ago.

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I The Stone Age was a prehistoric period which paved the way for the use of the very first tools (which were all made from stone). These tools usually had a point, an edge, or a concave surface. This period in ancient history lasted for 3.4 million years and was replaced with metal works between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE.
II Fossilized animal bones with tool marks have been found in Ethiopia and dated at about 3.4 million years old. This makes them the oldest indirect evidence of stone tool use. In 2015, further excavations in Kenya revealed the earliest proof of hominin use of tools, indicating that Kenyanthropus platyops (a hominin fossil discovered in 1999) might have been the first known tool-user.
III Stone tools such as chert and flint were shaped and used in different applications from cutting tools to weapons. Other materials were also used as tools, including bone, wood, shells, and deer antlers. During this time, pottery was also being made out of clay, and animal domestication had also been practiced.
IV Throughout Eastern Europe and Siberia, huts made from mammoth bones have been found, leading experts to believe that the people responsible for making the huts were expert mammoth hunters. Other examples of mammoth huts were found along the Dnieper river valley of Ukraine, in the Czech Republic, and southern Poland.
V The technique of ore smelting marked the beginning of the Bronze Age. At this point of transition, the most significant manufactured metal was bronze, made by combining tin and copper, which had been smelted separately. This early part of the Bronze age was also known as the Chalcolithic "copper-stone" period.
VI Between 6000 BCE and 2500 BCE, the majority of the population was living in North Africa and Eurasia. Human metallurgy dates back to the 5th or 6th millennium BCE, in the area of Plonik in modern-day Serbia. The earliest evidence of it coming in the form of a copper ax belonging to the Vinca culture, from 5500 BCE.

The Ancient Artifacts That Honor Egypt’s Powerful Leaders

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