Unruly Interviews: Kara Cooney

Hello everyone,

I am so excited to bring you our first interview of 2024! This week I’m joined by Dr. Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptology at UCLA and author of several books, including The Woman Who Would Be King, which is the biography I relied on for the Hatshepsut episode of the podcast. She is also behind the popular substack

Ancient/Now

, which I definitely recommend checking out if you haven’t already!

This is a really fun and informative episode.

Kara Cooney

and I talk a lot about the possibility that Hatshepsut was manipulated by someone else to take the throne, we talk about why her books is a little scandalous to other Egyptologists, and we weigh the reasons why Hatshepsut is forgotten while Cleopatra and Nefertiti are not. It is a doozy and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it.

If you haven’t listened to my episode on Hatshepsut, this conversation will make a lot more sense if you listen to that first!

Kara mentions a few of her books in the episode. If you’d like to check that out, you can do so here:

• The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt (2015)

• When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt (2020)

• The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World (2021)

• Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches (2022)

• Recycling for Death: A Social History of Ancient Egypt and the Royal Caches (forthcoming March 2024).

Of course, you can also preorder my book, Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You've (Probably) Never Heard Of, coming out March 2024.

Kara Cooney is a professor of Egyptology at UCLA and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Specializing in social history, gender studies, and economies in the ancient world, she received her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. In 2005, she was co-curator of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cooney produced a com­parative archaeology television series, titled Out of Egypt, which aired in 2009 on the Discovery Channel and is available online. Her popular books include The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Her latest books include Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches from Routledge (2022) and Recycling for Death: A Social History of Ancient Egypt and the Royal Caches from American University in Cairo Press (forthcoming March 2024).