New research challenges the long-held belief that Pharaoh Thutmose III destroyed statues of his predecessor Hatshepsut out of vengeful rage after her death in 1458 B.C.E. Jun Yi Wong, a research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, examined hundreds of statue fragments from Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri in Luxor. His study, published in Antiquity on June 24, reveals that the statues were broken according to a ritual practice called deactivation—snapped at the neck, waist, and knees—while faces were left intact. Wong found that the fragments were not immediately buried but later reused by everyday Egyptians as building materials, suggesting pragmatic reuse rather than targeted erasure.
This matters because it overturns a century-old narrative that framed Hatshepsut's legacy through a gendered lens of personal vendetta. By showing that Thutmose III's actions followed standard pharaonic protocol, the research highlights how modern biases have colored interpretations of ancient history. It also underscores the value of revisiting archival excavation records—in this case, those of Met archaeologist Herbert Winlock from the 1920s—to correct assumptions about female rulers and the motivations behind iconoclasm in ancient Egypt.