Walk like an Egyptian

Listening to historical podcasts has now brought me to History of Egypt, which is very well made, with the various reigns by monarchs as a red narrative thread but by no means exclusive, as there are also plenty of episodes on mythology, music, religion, calendar, and depending on the time we're in close ups on the archaeological evidence we have of non-royal lives. Since I was in an Egyptian mind set, I browsed through another old and early favourite of mine, Pauline Gedge's novel Child of the Morning about Hatshepsut. Teenage me loved it and even in her 20s me cried her heart out upon rereading it every damn time. Going back now I did not cry anymore, and I did see flaws younger me had not noticed, but all in all, it held up pretty well. I mean, you can see it was the author's first novel and also that research has marched on since the 1970s which is when this was published, but: it reads beautifully, very atmospheric, and it manages to get across things like the intense every day presence of religion, or the lack of an incest taboo. Our heroine, Hatshepsut, genuinely believes herself chosen by Amun and talks of herself as beautiful the way Egyptian monarchs often do in inscriptions but modern day literary main characters meant as sympathetic don't. (Especially female ones, who more likely are bound to have a hang up about their looks and whose true beauty is only recognized by other sympathetic characters.) She's also that rarely, ambitous to rule from childhood onwards but with a strong ethical compass; no assassinations for Hatshepsut. (This, in fact, in the age of the antihero(ine) makes her unusual in a different way than she was when this book was published; I bet nowadays some readers are disgruntled she doesn't kill her nephew and stepson, knowing he will one day destroy her. (Sidenote: this is one of the "research has moved on" things - today, the assumption is that Hatshepsut died of natural causes and the the relationship between her and Thutmos III was mostly positive, since his attempt to remove her from public memory did not happen after the transfer of power but several decades later, near the ned of his own life.)

The flaws I was talking about earlier: mostly the snobbery I don't think is intended by the author. (I.e. not the ancient Egyptian types. Not just Hatshepsut but also her mother and her older daughter are elegant and beautiful; otoh, the royal concubines who weren't born princesses are vulgar and only superficially pretty, be they the mother of Hatshepsut's half brother (Thotmes II) or of her nephew and stepson Thotmes III. Ms Gedge, I bet those ladies, not being the product of incesteous unions, might have had better genetics in terms of physical health and looks. (Senmut is the lone non-aristocratic character who is still as dashing, smart and able as any born aristocrat.) (The characterisation of Aset and to a lesser degree Mutnofer as vulgar schemers is also in contrast to the three dimensional presentation of Thotmes III, who is Hatshepsut's eventual doom but not written as evil by the narrative; he and Hatshepsut have a genuine respect for each other's abilities and she does wish at one point he was her son.) There's also the way that uprisings against Egypt are treated as incomprehensibly ungrateful and barbaric on the side of the rebels, but that would be how the Egyptians saw it, and we never get a no-Egyptian pov, so I can wave it away, but we do get other povs than Hatshepsut and all the other pov characters still go on about the vulgarity and spitefulness of Aset and what not, so I can't.

All this said, it didn't stop me from still appreciating the novel, not least because while by now I have read others featuring Hatshepsut, this one is still for me the best focused on Egypt's most famous female ruler (before Cleopatra).