+
upworthy
More

She ruled Egypt long before Cleopatra, and there's a reason you haven't heard of her.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were men. And then there was her.

Her name was Hatshepsut.

She was the first woman to become a pharaoh.

As Kate Narev of TED-Ed explains in the video at the end of this post, other women had ruled as powerful queens, but she was the first to actually be the pharaoh.


But 20 years after she died, someone tried to erase her from history. Statues of her were smashed, and they removed her name wherever they could find it.

Here's what probably happened.

Hatshepsut had became pharaoh in a roundabout way. When the pharaoh Thutmose II died, his son, Thutmose III, was only a kid. Hatshepsut, the dead king's primary wife, became his regent.

Over time — and remember, Thutmose III was still too young to say much about it — she became more and more powerful until she was officially made pharaoh.

But a female pharaoh freaked people out.

It's likely because Hatshepsut's rise to the throne was a challenge to the traditional idea of maat, or universal harmony. And to some, "universal harmony" meant only men could ever be pharaohs. They also worried her success might encourage other women to seek power.

So Hatshepsut tried to be, um, more manly.

She was often shown as having a beard.

Hatshepsut also tried to show she was no threat to maat by taking the name "Maatkare." And she changed the ending of her original name to the masculine "su." It didn't work.

So, how'd she do as pharaoh?

Everything we know about Hatshepsut's 25-year rule was written by — or painted or carved for — the pharaoh herself, so it's hard to know for sure. But experts believe she had a successful, peaceful reign, even if some folks' sense of shattered maat never quite settled down.

And that's probably why someone tried to erase her from history 20 years later.

The most likely theory is that Thutmose III, still dealing with the blowback caused by having a female pharaoh, decided to make it seem as if the whole thing had never happened at all.

But it's not so easy to hide the memory of someone immortalized in stone. There were enough traces left of Hatshepsut to figure out who, and what, she was when modern archaeologists began coming across the ancient clues.

Hatshepsut's temple is now a popular spot for tourists.

This video tells the whole fascinating story:

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

Keep ReadingShow less
via Pexels

A teacher lists his class rules.

The world would be a much better place if humans weren’t so … human. We all fall short of perfection. Common sense is, sadly, not too common. And there’s one guy out there who always manages to screw things up when things start getting good.

Call it Murphy’s law. Call it the great “reason we can’t have nice things.” Call it entropy. It feels like a whole lot of pain could be avoided if we all had just a little bit more sense.

But what if there was one rule that we all agreed to follow to make everyone’s life better? What would this magical rule be?

A Reddit user who goes by the name P4insplatter came to this realization and asked the AskReddit subforum, “What simple rule would fix the world if everyone actually followed it?” They received dozens of simple rules that if everyone got behind would make the world drastically better.

Keep ReadingShow less
Sandra Maria/Youtube, Official Lives & Music Videos/Youtube

You can't not sing this song.

The music of Queen has a profound visceral effect on everyone. Few pieces of art can cause complete strangers to put aside their differences and come together in song, but by golly, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of them. It would be cheesy if it weren’t so absolutely beautiful.

This pertains even to non-English-speaking countries, it appears. Recently, thousands of Harry Styles concertgoers in Warsaw, Poland, began cheering as those iconic beginning piano notes penetrated the air.
Keep ReadingShow less

Movie critic Roger Ebert speaking his mind at the Sundance Film Festival.

It’s been ten years since the world lost Roger Ebert to cancer, and his voice is sorely missed. Ebert had a pure love of cinema, and even though he was a film critic in a sweater with a Pulitzer Prize, he wrote and spoke in a way accessible to every man.

He didn’t care if a film was a Hollywood blockbuster or art-house fare; what mattered was whether it deserved his highly-coveted “thumbs up.”

Ebert was an extremely gifted communicator whose interests went far beyond film. In his later years, he often mused about music, politics, and American cultural events with the same eloquence, thoughtfulness and wit.

Keep ReadingShow less
@over40slbmom/TikTok

Feeling nostalgic yet?

It seems like so many iterations of unfettered joy from our childhood haven’t made it to the modern age, and playgrounds are no exception.

Gone are the days of metal slides that scorched the derriere in the summertime, seesaws that doubled as human catapults and the notorious merry-go-rounds that separated the weak from the strong. Good old fashioned character building—safety be damned!

As it turns out, a few of these old relics are still standing. And footage of kids playing at one of these bygone parks is filling adults—particularly Gen Xers—with sweet nostalgia.
Keep ReadingShow less

A couple shares why they decided to leave the United States.

Although it is difficult to tell if there is a trend of Americans moving out of the country, rough estimates show that around 8 million currently live in other countries—double the 4.1 million living abroad in 1999.

The most popular countries for Americans to move to are Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom, in that order.

A big reason why some are leaving the U.S. is that an increasing number of employers allow people to work abroad. Others are choosing to leave because of cost of living increases and “golden visa” programs. Golden visas offer the chance to get a foreign residency permit by purchasing a house or making a significant investment or donation.

Keep ReadingShow less