The First Female Pharoah: Sobekneferu, Goddess of the Seven Stars

In The First Female Pharoah: Sobekneferu, Goddess of the Seven Stars, historian Andrew Collins offers a reassessment of Sobekneferu, the first woman to rule both Upper and Lower Egypt—an achievement long obscured by fragmentary evidence and mythmaking. Collins argues that her brief reign deserves recognition not as an anomaly but as a consequential moment in ancient Egyptian leadership. Born to Amenemhat III during the Middle Kingdom, Sobekneferu, also known as Neferusobek, ascended the throne around 1798 BCE, per Collins, amid growing instability. Economic strains and the failure of the Nile to flood undermined royal authority. Drawing on sparse material evidence—broken statues, scattered inscriptions and later textual references—Collins reconstructs Sobekneferu’s reign with care. He traces her efforts to stabilize the kingdom, including completing her father’s mortuary complex at Hawara in the Fayum Oasis and elevating the crocodile god Sobek to state prominence. While the circumstances of her abrupt end in 1794 BCE remain unresolved, Collins treats uncertainty as part of historical record rather than a narrative flaw. The book’s greatest strength lies in its restraint. Collins transforms limited evidence into a readable, measured narrative without allowing speculation to overwhelm scholarship. His prose balances archeological detail with interpretive clarity, presenting Sobekneferu as a political actor navigating structural constraints rather than as a symbolic curiosity. Over time, Sobekneferu’s legacy fractured—absorbed into her father’s legacy and later mythologized as Nitocris, whose name Herodotus preserved in the fifth century BCE. The First Female Pharaoh invites readers to appreciate how authority, gender and memory intersect. —Dianna Wray