Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple (El-Deir El-Bahari)

Lying directly across the Nile from the great temple of Amun at Karnak, the great rock amphitheatre of Deir El Bahari provides a natural focal point of the west bank terrain and an inviting site for the temples of any rulers ambitious enough to attempt to incorporate the high cliffs of the Theban massif into the architectural program of their own monuments. The first Egyptian monarch to achieve this was the middle kingdom rulers Montuhotep Neb-hepetre, whose temple become a template for similar, later structures both here and elsewhere. But the crowning achievement of Deir El Bahari is, of course, the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut which now commands the whole area and which remains even in its ruinous state one of the great monuments of Egypt.

Temple of Queen Hatshepsut was called by the ancient Egyptians as Djeser-djeseru, which means ‘’the sacred of the sacreds’’. Hatshepsut’s terraced and rock-cut temple at Deir El Bahari is one of the most impressive monuments of western Thebes. Situated directly against the rock face of Deir El Bahari’s great rock bay, the temple not only echoed the lines of surrounding cliffs in its design but fused so effectively with them that it seems a natural extension of its setting. The temple was little more than a ruin when it was excavated by Edouard Naville in 1891, and later by Herbert Winlock and Emile Baraize, but the work of the polish-Egyptian mission, which has labored at the site since 1961 (currently direct by Franciszek Pawlicki), has led to a great deal of successful reconstruction.

It is known that the construction of this temple took 15 years, and modern studies have shown that is underwent a number of substantial modifications in that time. In the complete structure, the approach to the temple was along a sphinx-lined causeway, some 37 m (121ft) wide, which led up from the valley to the pylons which are now gone. Designed in multiple levels, the temple itself consisted of three board courts separated by colonnades, linked by ascending ramps and bounded by dressed walls. Hatshepsut recorded that she built her temple as a garden for my father Amun, and the first court once held exotic trees and shrubs brought from the land of Punt (perhaps southern Sudan or Eritrea). Its portico was decorated on its northern side with scenes of the marshes of lower (northern) Egypt and on the south with the quarrying and transportation of the queen’s great obelisks in upper (southern) Egypt. The portico of the second court was carved on its southern side with relief scenes of the famous expedition sent by Hatshepsut to distant Punt, and on the north, the renowned and finely executed ‘birth’ scenes showing the queen’s divine inception, which probably served as a model for the later scene of this type in Luxor temple.

The area of Deir El Bahari was long sacred to the goddess Hathor, and at the southern end of the second colonnade is a complete Hathor chapel, originally wit hits own entrance. The chapel contains a vestibule with characteristic Hathor-headed pillars, a 12 columned hypostyle hall and inner rooms decorated with various scenes of Hatshepsut and Hathor, and a hidden representation of the queen’s favorite Senenmut. At the northern end of the same colonnade is a somewhat smaller chapel of Anubis, again with 12 columned hall and inner rooms.

The upper terrace had an entrance portico decorated with Osiride statues of the queen before each pillar, though most of these have been destroyed. The portico opened to a columned court flanked on the left with a chapel dedicated to the royal cult and on the right by a chapel of the solar cult. A small ancillary chapel attached to this solar court is now believed to have been dedicated to the parents of Queen Hatshepsut. At the very back of the central court the innermost part of the temple is cut into cliff face. Eighteen cult niches – nine on each side – flanked the rock sanctuary of Amun which was the focus of the whole complex and which received the sacred barque of the god during annual celebration of the (beautiful feast of the valley). During the Ptolemaic era the sanctuary of Amun was renewed and expanded to include the cults of two great architects: Amenhotep son of Habu – the skilled overseer of works of for Amenhotep III; and Imhotep – the builder of Djoser’s step pyramid at Sakkara area. These individuals were also associated with wisdom and medicine, and the upper court may in fact have been used as a sanatorium and frequented by the sick at this time. Later yet, in the 7th century AD, the temple area became the site of a Coptic monastery, the monastery of the north from which the modern Arabic name of the site – Deir El Bahari – is derived.

Sadly, because of her unorthodox reign and the tensions between Hatshepsut and her erstwhile ward, Thutmosis III, the temple suffered much destruction and mutilation. Hatshepsut’s name and many of her representations were hacked away in the reaction inevitably followed her rule as a pharaoh. During the Amarna period many of the images of Amun were also destroyed at the behest of Akhenaton, and even further attrition occurred in the 19th dynasty when the Osirid statues of Hatshepsut were destroyed. The early Copts to, in their zeal to do away with the old pagan images, little of the temple’s artwork was left undamaged. Restoration carried out at the temple over a good many years ha successfully reconstructed many of the scenes, however, and the Polish- Egyptian team working in the temple has recently been able to restore the wall of the upper terrace with more than 70 recovered carved blocks. The newly repaired registers depict the procession of the sacred barque of Amun; and the Egyptian antiquates officials plan to open this long-closed area to the public.

A valley temple of Hatshepsut’s monument – similar in type to those found on earlier pyramid complexes – originally stood at the foot of the long causeway which stretched from the cliff temple to destroyed in antiquity, but its foundation deposits were discovered by Howard Carter, and blocks from the walls of this temple were found with the name of the structure’s architect, Puimre, written in hieratic on their undersides.