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Senmut was born in a middle-class family in a Hermontis. He was Hatshepsut’s favourite and probably also her lover. To her. To whom he was absolutely dedicated, he owed his privileged position. Besides managing Ammone’s properties, “director of the two granaries” and “director of the two fields”, he managed the royal family’s properties. He supervisied the great task, such as the cutting, the creating and the raising of some obelisks of the temple in Karnak, the building of Hatshepsut’s funeral temple in Deir-el-Bahari. He was also involved in the royal family’s matters: he was Neferure’s tutor, who was Tuthmosi’s II and Hatshepsut’s daughter, and responsible for the queen-pharaoh’s hairstyles and insigna for her jubilee. Senmut was also a studious, and he was able to invent sophisticated cryptograms using the resources of the hieroglyphic writing. He put, moreover, more than twenty statues in the temples in Tebe and in Upper Egypt, he settled a cenotaph in Gebel al-Silsila, he ordered to build for himself two tombs, one of which hidden in a corner of the court in Hatshepsut’s funeral temple, that had a sarcophagus of the kind used only for the pharaohs. He was even portrayed in this temple, which was a very rare privilege for a simple subject. Unfortunately, a little before the queen’s death, he fell in disgrace, his name and his images were cancelled.
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