It may not be completely accurate to refer to Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt as "transgender;" but it's certainly not wholly inaccurate. In fact, Hatshepsut called herself a king. She inscribed titles on granite monuments effectively referring to herself as, "her majesty, the king." This pivotal ruler of humanity's original great civilization further asserted her "kingship" by wearing the garb of a male monarch — even having a false beard made to fit her chin.

"As she seemed to be looking for ways to synthesize the images of queen and king, as if a visual compromise might resolve the paradox of a female sovereign," Chip Brown writes of Hatshepsut for National Geographic. "In one seated red granite statue, Hatshepsut is shown with the unmistakable body of a woman but with the striped nemes headdress and uraeus cobra, symbols of a king. In some temple reliefs, Hatshepsut is dressed in a traditional restrictive ankle-length gown but with her feet wide apart in the striding pose of the king."

Hatshepsut's nearly 20-year rule ended with her death in 1458 B.C.E. by which time she had changed the world by firmly laying new political and architectural foundations upon which her successor, stepson Thutmose III, would grow Egypt's dominance of North Africa, what we now call the Middle East, and parts of the Mediterranean. In order to secure the throne for his offspring, Thutsmose III went all out trying to erase the arguably transgender aspects of his stepmother's memory.

Yet in stark contrast to the grandeur and elegance of Hatshepsut's crowning architectural achievement, her sprawling and towering mortuary temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god, Amon-Ra, at Deir el Bahri, the queen-king's mummy was recently rediscovered (after having been unknowingly passed over by famous Egyptologist Howard Carter in the 1920s). Her mummy had been discarded on the floor in a "pile of rags," as Chip Brown describes the scene inside a dank, tertiary tomb.

Like many important trans and LGB figures from history, the memory of Hatshepsut and her nonconforming gender expression has overcome attempts to be erased.