page_title: The Jewel of Seven Stars
section_title: Queen Hatshepsut
hierarchical_section_title: The Jewel of Seven Stars / Historical background / Queen Hatshepsut
caption_attribution_description: English: Closeup shot of a large granite sphinx bearing the likeness of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. Dating to the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, circa 1479-1458 B.C.
context_page_description: The Jewel of Seven Stars is a horror novel by Irish writer Bram Stoker, first published by Heinemann in 1903. The story is a first-person narrative of a young man pulled into an archaeologist's plot to revive Queen Tera, an ancient Egyptian mummy. It explores common fin de siècle themes such as imperialism, the rise of the New Woman and feminism, and societal progress.
  Prepublication issues toward a US edition were deposited for copyright by Doubleday, Page & Company in December 1902 and January 1903 but the first US edition was published by Harper & Brothers in 1904.
context_section_description: Though Queen Tera is an entirely fictional character, she bears many resemblances to Queen Hatshepsut, a pharaoh in Ancient Egypt. Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from 1479 BC to 1458 BC, one of the first and few female rulers. She married her half-brother, Tuthmose II, who ruled from 1492 BC until his death in 1479 BC. At this point, Hatshepsut became regent to Tuthmose's son, by a concubine, her half-nephew. Rather than being regent to the toddler king, however, Hatshepsut took the throne and declared herself ruler. However, because Egyptian kingship was intrinsically masculine, Hatshepsut publicly transformed her feminine self; all statues and "images of her after her coronation show her as a man—wide shoulders, trim hips, and no hint of breasts". About twenty years after her death in 1458 BC, her name and image was removed from temple walls, and many of her statues were destroyed. Dorman argues that this was not personal animosity, but rather an attempt to eradicate any hints of an unconventional, female ruler, "best erased to prevent the possibility of another powerful female ever inserting herself into the long line of Egyptian male kings".
  The tomb of Queen Hatshepsut was discovered by Howard Carter early in 1903, the same year as the publication of The Jewel of Seven Stars, in the Valley of the Kings—similar to the Valley of the Sorcerer, where Tera is found in the novel. The similarities between the two, Hebblethwaite states, are "almost too overt to be mere coincidence"; both are extremely powerful female rulers who take on the role of men. Just as Hatshepsut commanded and transfigured her masculine image, it is found in Tera's tomb that "[p]rominence was given to the fact that she, though a Queen, claimed all the privileges of kingship and masculinity. In one place she was pictured in man’s dress, and wearing the White and Red Crowns. In the following picture she was in female dress, but still wearing the Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, while the discarded male raiment lay at her feet". Both Tera and Hatshepsut also seemed to possess some awareness that their legacy would be destroyed. In the novel, Tera leaves an inscription stating her plans for resurrection, as well as that "the hatred of the priests was, she knew, stored up for her, and that they would after her death try to suppress her name". A similar inscription was found on an obelisk at Hatshepsut's memorial: "Now my heart turns this way and that, as I think what the people will say—those who shall see my monuments in years to come, and who shall speak of what I have done".
caption: The sphinx of Hatshepsut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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