Kara Cooney discusses The Woman Who Would be King

Egyptologist Kara Cooney describes her new book, The Woman Who Would Be King about ancient Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut. Plus, she discusses the natural reaction to finding a pile of bodies.

[setione]

I congratulate Professor Cooney for bringing Ancient Egyptians to life, because there is so much to learn from our shared human history!

[awuma]

Excellent interview, the last part about her on-site research being extremely interesting. As for the earlier part, I think that the attitudes toward women in power may be an old evolutionary adaptation, since until less that two centuries ago and the invention of modern medicine, child and maternal mortality were so high and life expectancy so short that women had to spend all of their time and energy on child raising and running the house in order for humanity to survive. Now women can spend a vastly smaller fraction of their lives in the home, making them able to work more or less equally with men. However, the plunging birthrates in all developed societies leave a lot to be thought about; does the Western civilization want to survive, repel its rivals and flourish?

[dapperdanman]

She's fantastically Not normal! one of the brightest stars I believe.

[latieplolo]

It's so rare to find work that goes beyond the one-damn-thing-after-another approach to history to really dig into the lived experience of the real people who made history. This book is full of conjecture and hypotheses, but all based on a strong foundation of research. I loved the way she thought about the motivations and daily life of this remarkable person. It was also fascinating to think about how such an unusual king stretched and played with this complex theology.