Why were Hatshepsut's names and images removed from many public monuments?

The removal of Hatshepsut’s names and images from public monuments has been a subject of significant historical debate. Early scholars often interpreted the defacement of her statues and the erasure of her name from official king lists as an act of vengeance by Thutmose III, intended to punish her for usurping the throne.1

Later Egyptologists proposed a more political motive: that Thutmose III sought to ensure the legitimacy of the royal succession by creating a direct line from Thutmose I and Thutmose II to himself, effectively removing the "female interruption" of Hatshepsut’s reign.12

A more recent interpretation, supported by a 2025 study, suggests that the damage may not have been a systematic attempt to erase her memory entirely. Instead, some statues may have been ritually broken to deactivate their power—a common practice for royal statuary—while other damage occurred due to the reuse of materials and natural post-depositional processes. Regardless of the specific intent, the systematic proscription of her reign resulted in Hatshepsut remaining in obscurity for centuries until the decoding of hieroglyphs in 1822.1