Hatshepsut was the half-sister of Thutmosis II, as well as his wife.
When he died, Hatshepsut was to reign as regent for his little son Thutmose III
by a lesser wife, as he and Hatshepsut had only a daughter, Neferure.
There was nothing unusual in the running of Egypt by a lady regent pending the
majority of a small king; it had already happened twice during the 18th Dynasty alone,
to say nothing of Queen Sobeknofru, last ruler of the 12th Dynasty, who took the throne herself
when her line was left with no male heirs (but unfortunately died childless after just three years, ending the 12th Dynasty).

Instead, Hatshepsut set aside the small Thutmose III, and took on the role of Pharaoh directly.
She dressed in the traditional Pharaonic robes and wore the false beard;
she had herself called be King Hatshepsut, not Queen Hatshepsut.
Most striking of all, she gave away all of her queenly titles to her daughter,
particularly God's Wife of Amon; no woman who was not a Queen Consort had ever borne this title.

Because, over the course of the early 18th Dynasty, the role of the Queen Consort had become important
and even necessary, Hatshepsut needed someone to play this role; in all activities and daily ceremonies,
she was accompanied by her little daughter, who thus emerged from the quiet mysteries of the women's quarter
at an unusually early age.

The fact that Hatshepsut clearly trained her daughter to inherit the throne can be interpreted in several ways;
perhaps she really meant this to happen, or else she meant to marry Neferure to Thutmose III when he would be older,
or else she thought that it was better to have them both educated, as life expectancy was so risky.

She never declared who should inherit her throne at her death...but in any case, sadly, her beloved daughter died before her.

Like her husband Thutmose II, Hatshepsut has been greatly criticized by historians for her "disastrous" foreign policy,
namely stopping the period of very numerous military conquests which Thutmosis I had led so successfully.
I am not sure this is really a criticism.

In any case, she was happily accepted by her people.

She organized tremendous building projects, most famously the temple of Luxor.

When she died after reigning for fifteen years, her nephew Thutmosis III finally acceded to the throne.
Although he his relations with Hatshepsut had apparently always been quite good,
he gave the order that her name, which was engraved in hieroglyphics all over Egypt, be smashed out with hammers,
and her name removed from all the king lists. Some, however, fortunately remained.

In particular, the slipshod workmen who were given the order to dismantle Hatshepsut's Red Chapel and efface her name
from every block, failed to turn over the blocks and consider every side, so that they left numerous inscriptions relating to her.

Champollion saw these inscriptions, some effaced, some effaced and then replaced with the name of Thutmose III and others intact, referring to an unknown king, not usually present in the king lists, whose cartouche he read (for some reason) as "Amenenthe". It never occurred to Champollion that the unknown king could be a woman, yet something in the inscriptions certainly amazed him: