It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast

we are kicking off a small series on Ancient Egypt and in this first podcast we are talking

about one of the most extraordinary pharaohs from the history of Ancient Egypt. Her name

was Hatshepsut and she was an extraordinary figure. She ruled in her own right for years

she was called a pharaoh, a title that was normally for men. We know that she was involved

in military campaigns, in trade expeditions to far away lands, in the construction of

monumental architecture including temples and the building of obelisks, a remarkable

figure who was almost erased unfairly from history. Well to shine a light on Hatshepsut,

this extraordinary ancient Egyptian pharaoh, I was delighted to be joined by Lucia Garlin.

Lucia is a leading expert on Ancient Egypt, she is a huge fan of Hatshepsut, brilliant

speaker so it was great to get on the show to talk all things Hatshepsut. You're going

to love this one, she was absolutely great. Here's Lucia.

Lucia, thank you so much for joining me today. It's such a pleasure, Tristan. Now Hatshepsut,

as a female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt, she seems to be this exceptional figure.

I think there's no denying that Hatshepsut was an extraordinary woman. You know, the ancient

Egyptian pharaoh was ideologically male, there's no escaping that fact. That's not to underestimate

the significance of women within the royal family, pharaoh's mothers, pharaoh's wives,

pharaoh's daughters, extremely important both cultically, often politically, they exercised

a great deal of influence very often. But in some 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history,

women didn't tend to rule the country and there was Hatshepsut, attaining that position

of ruler and then the achievements that we can talk about were quite marvelous.

Absolutely, we can definitely talk about all of that in the next hour. But first of all,

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