Michael: We think of female rulers as glass-ceiling-breakers, right? Trailblazers who fought the system. Kevin: Yeah, of course. That's the whole narrative. Michael: Well, what if the first powerful queens in history weren't trying to shatter the patriarchy, but were actually its most brutal defenders? We're talking human sacrifice to protect a male heir. It gets dark, fast. Kevin: Wait, what? Human sacrifice? That completely flips the script. That sounds less like a feminist icon and more like a mob boss. Michael: That's the explosive core of Kara Cooney's book, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt. It's a fascinating and unsettling look at how female power actually worked in the ancient world. Kevin: And Cooney isn't just some random historian. She's a professor of Egyptology at UCLA, a real heavyweight in the field. She spent years researching this, and it's clear she has a strong feminist perspective, which has stirred up some debate among readers and critics. Michael: Exactly. She argues that ancient Egypt was unique in consistently allowing women to rule, but the reasons why are far more complex and frankly, more unsettling than we imagine. Let's start with the first queen she covers, and it's a brutal one.

Michael: Let's go back to 3000 B.C. to meet our first queen, Merneith. The book calls her the 'Queen of Blood' for a reason. The situation is classic political instability: the king, Djet, dies suddenly. He leaves behind a son, Den, who is just a child. Kevin: Okay, so a succession crisis. The throne is vulnerable. I can see where this is going. Michael: Precisely. The biggest threat isn't from a foreign enemy, but from within. The book quotes an Egyptian understanding: "men are the most likely aggressors... an uncle’s interest would be best served by killing the young monarch and crowning himself in his place." So, to prevent a male relative from staging a coup, the court turns to the one person whose interests are perfectly aligned with the young king's survival: his mother. Kevin: His mother, Merneith. So she steps in as regent to protect her son. That makes sense. It's a defensive move. Michael: It is. But this is where it gets dark. To secure her son's future, Merneith had to be ruthless. Archaeologists excavating her tomb at Abydos found something astonishing. Her tomb is massive, built on the scale of a king's. But surrounding it were the graves of more than 100 other people. Kevin: A hundred people? Don't tell me they all died of natural causes at the same time. Michael: Not a chance. The book details the evidence: these were retainers, courtiers, servants, all sacrificed to accompany her husband, the dead king, into the afterlife. But Cooney argues it was more than just a religious ritual. Merneith, as regent, would have overseen this. She was making strategic decisions about who lived and who died. Kevin: Whoa, hold on. Human sacrifice? So her first major act of power was to kill people to prop up the men's club? That's... incredibly bleak. Michael: It's a shocking idea, but it's central to Cooney's argument. She wasn't killing for her own ambition. She was culling the court, strategically eliminating anyone who could be a potential rival to her son. It was a brutal act of patriarchal preservation. She was the system's fiercest protector, precisely because she was a woman. Kevin: That is a massive paradox. She wields immense power, the power of life and death, but the ultimate goal is to hand that power right back to a man. Michael: Exactly. The book quotes, "The queen’s power didn’t compete with the patriarchy but rather supported it, providing it with strong foundations." Merneith ruled, and she ruled effectively, but her entire reign was a placeholder. Once her son Den was old enough, she disappeared from the records. Her name was even omitted from later king lists. Kevin: So she did the dirty work and then was conveniently forgotten. But doesn't that just reinforce the idea that a woman's power is only 'acceptable' when it serves men? It feels depressingly familiar, even 5,000 years later. Michael: It's a pattern Cooney identifies throughout the book. Female power was a tool, a safety valve for the system. But it was always seen as temporary, an exception to the rule. And each woman who came after Merneith had to find a new, more sophisticated way to justify her grip on power. Kevin: So they had to evolve their strategies. They couldn't just rely on being the protective mother forever. Michael: Precisely. And that's the tightrope these women walked. Which brings us to our next queen, who took this game to a whole new level about 1,500 years later. If Merneith used brute force, Hatshepsut used the ancient world's most sophisticated PR campaign.

Kevin: A PR campaign? In ancient Egypt? What does that even look like? No social media, no press conferences. Michael: It looks like stone and gold. Hatshepsut's situation was even more precarious than Merneith's. She was regent for her young stepson, Thutmose III, but she wasn't content to be a placeholder. Around year seven of his reign, she did something unprecedented: she declared herself king. Not queen, but a full-fledged, male-titled pharaoh. Kevin: Okay, that's a bold move. How do you get away with that when the actual male heir is standing right there? Michael: You rewrite reality. Hatshepsut launched what the book essentially calls a massive propaganda campaign. First, she claimed divine parentage. She had reliefs carved in her magnificent temple at Deir el-Bahri that told a new origin story: her mother was visited by the great god Amun in the form of her father. So, she wasn't just a mortal woman; she was the physical daughter of a god. Kevin: Wow. So it's like a modern politician who, lacking a traditional mandate, goes on a massive branding blitz? Building monuments instead of running TV ads. And the whole 'divine birth' thing is the ultimate 'God is on my side' campaign slogan. Michael: It's the perfect analogy. She couldn't claim power by right of birth in the traditional male way, so she created a divine mandate that no one could question without committing heresy. She also changed her image. Over time, her statues and reliefs became more masculine. She's depicted wearing the traditional kilt and even the false beard of a pharaoh. She was visually transforming herself into the office she held. Kevin: She was literally dressing for the job she wanted. But was it all just for show? Did she actually do anything as pharaoh? Michael: Oh, absolutely. Her reign was one of peace and immense prosperity. She launched one of the most famous trade expeditions in Egyptian history to the land of Punt—modern-day Eritrea or Somalia—bringing back incense, myrrh, and exotic animals. She was a prolific builder, and her projects, like her temple, were architectural marvels. She was, by all accounts, a very successful ruler. Kevin: So the PR campaign worked. People bought into it. Michael: For a while. But Cooney argues that this power was always an "illusion" that had to be constantly maintained. There's a fascinating quote from her temple inscriptions that reads, "He who will praise her, he will live. He who will speak an evil thing, ignoring her majesty, he will die." Kevin: That sounds a little defensive. Like she knew her position was fragile. Michael: Deeply fragile. And it proves the point. The PR campaign was a brilliant strategy, but it wasn't permanent. Kevin: So what happened? Did the PR campaign work forever? Michael: It didn't. After she died, her stepson Thutmose III finally took sole power. And for years, he did nothing. But late in his reign, he began a systematic campaign to erase her from history. Her statues were smashed, her name chiseled out of inscriptions, her image removed from temple walls. He tried to write her out of existence. Kevin: Unbelievable. After a reign of peace and prosperity, her legacy is just... deleted. This pattern of female power being temporary and fragile is a recurring theme, isn't it? Michael: It's the central theme. And it leads us to our final, and most famous queen: Cleopatra. With her, the game changed entirely, because the threat wasn't just an ambitious uncle or a resentful stepson. It was an entire empire.

Kevin: Alright, Cleopatra. Everyone knows her. The seductress, the drama queen, the one with the asp. Michael: And that's exactly the image the book wants to dismantle. Cooney's chapter is cheekily titled "Drama Queen," but her argument is that Cleopatra was anything but. She was a brilliant, calculating political strategist, perhaps the most intellectually formidable of all these queens. But she was playing a completely different game. She wasn't just dealing with internal Egyptian politics; she was playing against a rising superpower: Rome. Kevin: So the stakes were infinitely higher. Michael: Infinitely. The Ptolemaic dynasty she was born into was already a snake pit of betrayal and murder. Her own sister was executed. She learned from a young age that power was a blood sport. But she also knew Egypt was a prize that Rome coveted. Her strategy was to make herself, and Egypt, indispensable to Rome's most powerful men. Kevin: Which is where Caesar and Mark Antony come in. The famous love affairs. Michael: The book reframes them as strategic alliances. Cooney has this fantastic line: "Cleopatra wasn’t the curse of these men; Egypt’s wealth was." Rome was in the midst of a brutal civil war. Powerful men needed money and resources to fund their armies. Egypt had that in spades. Cleopatra's "relationships" were her way of backing a horse in the Roman race, tying Egypt's fate to a winner. Kevin: Okay, I like that reframe. It wasn't about her being a 'drama queen,' but about her being a CEO of a nation under threat of a hostile takeover. Michael: Precisely. And she used every tool at her disposal. The book points out something unique about her: "Cleopatra is the first woman ruler discussed in these pages who used her procreative abilities to her political benefit, as a man would have." Having a son with Julius Caesar, Caesarion, wasn't just a personal matter. It was a political masterstroke. It created a living link between Rome and Egypt, a potential heir to both worlds. Kevin: A human merger and acquisition. But it's a risky strategy. It only works if your chosen partner wins. Michael: And that was her ultimate downfall. She backed Caesar, and he was assassinated. She then backed Mark Antony, and he was defeated by his rival, Octavian. Her entire strategy depended on picking the right Roman patron, and in the end, she backed the loser. Kevin: And Octavian, the winner, needed to justify his war against Antony. So what does he do? He launches his own PR campaign. Michael: A vicious one. He painted Cleopatra as the foreign, degenerate sorceress who used her witchcraft and sexuality to corrupt a good Roman man. It was a narrative of misogyny and xenophobia. He declared war not on Antony, a fellow Roman, but on Cleopatra, the foreign queen. It was politically brilliant and utterly devastating. Kevin: It's the oldest trick in the book. Blame the woman, especially the foreign one. So after Antony's defeat and suicide, she was trapped. Michael: Completely. Octavian wanted to parade her through the streets of Rome in chains, the ultimate symbol of his victory. Her famous suicide, whether by asp or poison, was her final act of political defiance. She refused to be a pawn in his triumph. With her death, the 3,000-year-old line of pharaohs ended, and Egypt became just another Roman province. The anomaly of female rule was over.

Michael: So we see this incredible arc. From queens like Merneith who ruled to protect the patriarchy, to queens like Hatshepsut who mastered propaganda to create their own legitimacy, to a queen like Cleopatra who tried to play superpowers against each other and lost. Kevin: It makes you wonder. The book asks 'Why Women Don't Rule the World.' Cooney's answer seems to be that female power, at least in these historical contexts, is often only tolerated when it's useful to the existing male-led system. The moment it becomes a threat, or acts for its own sake, the system pushes back. Hard. Michael: It's a powerful and somewhat sobering thought. Cooney argues that the Egyptians, for all their patriarchy, were pragmatic. They used female leadership to solve crises. But that power was always conditional. It was a short-term illusion, as she puts it. Kevin: And when that system collided with the rigid, uncompromising patriarchy of Rome, it shattered. Cleopatra's story is the tragic finale of that collision. It wasn't her personal failing; it was a systemic one. Michael: It's a fascinating and challenging perspective. What do you all think? Do these ancient patterns of conditional power still play out today? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. We'd love to hear your take. Kevin: It definitely gives you a lot to think about. A brilliant, and at times, brutal look at history. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.