Statue of Hatshepsut as Pharaoh

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

The statue of Hatshepsut dressed in the regalia of a male pharaoh is more than a political maneuver or a gendered paradox—it is the foundation of a new ontological possibility. For Heidegger, such a work is not merely a representation of power but a founding event—what he calls Stiftung. Here, the being of sovereignty is rethought and re-set into stone, through art.

The strife of earth and world is especially dramatic in this sculpture. The world of Egyptian tradition demands that the pharaoh be male, divine, celestial in order. But the earth—here in the body of Hatshepsut, a female ruler—asserts itself through the very material tension between form and expectation. Yet the work does not collapse in contradiction. It holds that tension as truth. The body is feminine, the pose is masculine. This rift allows for the emergence of a new understanding: that divine kingship is not fixed, but disclosable through the work.

In its serenity, Hatshepsut’s statue does not demand authority—it lets authority be seen as something that can be recast, reclaimed, re-thought. Heidegger would say this statue does not depict power; it lets power come into presence in a new mode. It lets being be.