The great pharaoh Amunhotep III reigned for 37 years from circa 1387BC to 1350BC. During his reign the tributes and foreign taxes that had been secured by the military conquests of his predecessors continued to pour into the coffers of Ancient Egypt. The temple and the priests of the state god Amun-Ra were granted a significant portion of the nation’s income in recognition of Amun-Ra’s past interventions and future supplicated support for all Egyptian endeavours. Amunhotep III took a “commoner” called Tiye to be his primary royal wife and together they produced at least two sons and several daughters. The elder son Djutmose was destined to be the successor of Amunhotep III, but he disappeared as a young man, presumed dead and Amunhotep III’s second son, also called Amunhotep became the heir apparent. The young Amunhotep took the beautiful Nefertiti to be his wife.

Piye was the son of Nubian kings. From his capital at Napata, he extended Kushite influence into Egypt, to Thebes, conquered Memphis and the Delta for a time, and had one daughter installed as the next God’s Wife of Amun.

Nubia had been conquered by the Tutmosid kings of Egypt during the 18th dynasty. After the death of Ramses XI in the 20th dynasty, Egypt’s rule began to fragment. After the end of the 21st Dynasty, the next three dynasties ruled in large part concurrently, from Bubastis and Tanis, from Leontopolis, and from Sais. By the end of the 23rd dynasty, Nubia was prepared to invade Egypt.

The famous Cleopatra, that great queen who was actually a Greek woman of Macedonian descent and the seventh Cleopatra to rule Egypt, is oftentimes cited as the last of her line. It is true that after her demise Egypt fell to Rome and had no more kings or queens, but Cleopatra was not the last of her line. She was survived by her four children.

Approximately nine months after Cleopatra was smuggled into Julius Caesar’s chambers, and presented to him rolled out of a Persian carpet, she gave birth to a son. She named him Ptolemy Caesar, though he was best known to the world by his nickname: Caesarion, “little Caesar”.

Like any mother, Cleopatra had great hopes for her little Caesar. She wished that Julius Caesar, although already married to someone else, would recognise Caesarion as his son and heir. It was not a particularly selfless wish. Such acknowledgement would expand the influence of Cleopatra and her descendents all the way to Rome.

There were six female rulers in 3,000 years of Egypt’s Ancient History. There was no word for a female ruler in Ancient Egyptian. It was not until the time of the Greek occupation (around 323BC) that a word for queen was introduced into Egypt when Basilissa was heard for the first time.

Five of the six female rulers ruled at the end of dynasties, when power was already slipping from the grasp of the ruling dynasties and no male was available to take the throne. The only female who reigned as a powerful ruler during a golden period of Egyptian history was Hatshepsut who came to the throne in a somewhat illegitimate manoeuvre described below.

The New Kingdom in Ancient Egypt was a period of development and prosperity. The 18th Dynasty was established in 1550BC. The land had been freed from the yoke of foreign domination when Ahmose and his army from Upper Egypt drove out the Hyksos, a foreign infiltrating force from Asia Minor. Ahmose took the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt and the land was united once more under an Egyptian king. Ahmose reigned for 25 years and was followed to throne by Amunhotep I who was in turn succeeded by Thutmose I in 1504BC.