Near the cliffs of Luxor, where ancient temples rise from the desert, a new discovery is changing how we understand one of Egypt’s most famous rulers. For years, historians believed Pharaoh Hatshepsut — a rare female leader in ancient Egypt — was almost completely erased from history by her successor, Thutmose III.
Her statues were found smashed and scattered, and the story went that he ordered their destruction out of resentment.
But a new study led by Jun Yi Wong, an Egyptologist at the University of Toronto, claims that’s not entirely true. Published in the journal Antiquity, Wong’s research suggests that the broken statues weren’t simply acts of revenge. Many may have been damaged as part of a known ritual process — one that was used not just for Hatshepsut, but for other pharaohs too.
“While the ‘shattered visage’ of Hatshepsut has come to dominate the popular perception, such an image does not reflect the treatment of her statuary to its full extent,” Wong told Gizmodo.
By going back to century-old excavation records and carefully tracking how the statues were damaged and where they were found, Wong has revisited one of history’s greatest alleged smearing campaigns. The evidence points to a mix of ritual, reuse, and time — not just political rivalry — as the forces behind the destruction.
Rituals of Power, Not Hatred
For decades, scholars assumed that Thutmose III acted out of spite. Hatshepsut, after all, had seized the throne he was supposed to inherit. Instead of serving as regent for the boy king, she ruled as pharaoh for nearly two decades, even donning the royal beard and commissioning grand temples, including the magnificent mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahri near Luxor.
When archaeologist Herbert Winlock of the Metropolitan Museum of Art unearthed thousands of her statue fragments between 1922 and 1928, their broken forms seemed to point towards a tale of vindictive erasure. Winlock described them as “maddening relics of Thutmose’s spite.”
Not so fast, Wong’s analysis seems to say. Many of the statues were not obliterated but carefully broken at predictable weak points — the neck, waist, and knees — while leaving the faces untouched. The damage patterns were consistent with a known ritual practice in ancient Egypt: “deactivation.”
“The ancient Egyptians saw royal statues as powerful and perhaps even living entities,” Wong explained in an interview with Live Science. “When a pharaoh died, it was common… to deactivate their statues by breaking them.”
This wasn’t a punishment, but a rite. Statues were considered vessels. Breaking them at key joints neutralized their power in both the earthly and spiritual realms. It was a way of laying the statue, and its inhabitant, to rest.
Pieces in a Larger Puzzle
Wong’s detective work took him deep into the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sifting through unpublished field notes, sketches, and photos taken by the expedition’s photographer, Harry Burton. In reexamining where the statue fragments were found and how they were broken, he noticed something unusual: faces were often left intact. In fact, half of the freestanding statues recovered had faces that were virtually undamaged, and were sometimes buried in ways that suggest reverence rather than rage. This stood out since you wouldn’t expect these features if someone were out to erase a public figure from the historical record.
Those that were badly damaged often had another thing in common — they were found far from the original temple site, suggesting later reuse or vandalism. Some statue bases were missing entirely, having been hauled off as building material. Others were recycled as tools. Wong notes that fragments turned up in tombs from later periods and in ancient houses, and one such house appears to have been built almost entirely from pieces of Hatshepsut’s statues.
“The statues… appear to have been moved here to act as in-fill for the causeway’s construction,” Wong writes, referring to Thutmose III’s later temple, which literally paved over the remains of his predecessor’s.
This accumulation of evidence complicates the idea of a single, targeted campaign of destruction. Instead, it appears Hatshepsut’s statuary suffered a long and varied “afterlife”. Some fragments were ritually deactivated, others dismantled for convenience, and many more damaged simply by time, tremors, and reuse.
A Gendered Erasure — or a Practical One?
To be clear, Hatshepsut was the subject of a posthumous campaign to suppress her legacy. Her name was hacked out of temple walls. Some images were chiseled away. She was omitted from certain king lists.
“There is no doubt that Hatshepsut did suffer a campaign of persecution — at many monuments throughout Egypt, her images and names have been systematically hacked out,” Wong concedes. “We know that this campaign of persecution was initiated by Thutmose III, but we are not exactly sure why.”
But the idea that he acted out of vengeance or misogyny doesn’t align with how her statues were actually treated. Unlike wall reliefs, which were often defaced in unmistakably political acts, her statues appear to have been handled — at least in part — according to long-established funerary conventions. In fact, similar patterns of damage are found in statues of other male pharaohs, like Mentuhotep II and Amenhotep I.
In Egypt’s ritual logic, a statue that could act as a conduit for divine or royal essence had to be rendered inert — “killed,” in a way — when its time had passed.
Rethinking Iconoclasm
The new findings push historians to rethink how iconoclasm worked in ancient Egypt. It’s tempting to interpret damage through the lens of modern conflict, to see broken images as evidence of vendetta or political purging.
But in ancient Egypt, iconoclasm wasn’t always about politics. Sometimes, it was about managing divine power.
Wong’s study doesn’t exonerate Thutmose III. It places his actions within a broader cultural system. The shattered statues of Hatshepsut, once read as a symbol of patriarchal revenge, now appear as artifacts of a more intricate logic. And this makes her extraordinary rule stand out all the more.
“Unlike the other rulers, Hatshepsut did suffer a programme of persecution,” Wong concludes. “Yet, there is room for a more nuanced understanding… which was perhaps driven by ritual necessity rather than outright antipathy.”
In life, Hatshepsut broke tradition to become king. In death, her legacy may finally be reassembled — piece by piece.
