Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari

The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut is a terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor, built for the female pharaoh Hatshepsut between about 1479 and 1458 BC. Known in antiquity as Djeser-Djeseru, “Holy of Holies”, it served the god Amun and the cult of the queen after her death. Its colonnades, set against a sheer wall of limestone cliffs, make it one of the most striking buildings to survive from ancient Egypt.

Setting and purpose

Deir el-Bahari is a bay in the cliffs of western Thebes, facing the great temple of Amun at Karnak across the river. Around 2000 BC the Middle Kingdom king Mentuhotep II had built his own terraced temple and tomb there, and Hatshepsut chose the site next to it, partly to link herself with that earlier founder of a united Egypt.

Like other New Kingdom kings, Hatshepsut separated her temple from her tomb, which was cut in the Valley of the Kings on the other side of the cliff. The temple’s main sanctuary was dedicated to Amun. Every year during the Beautiful Festival of the Valley the god’s statue was carried in its sacred boat from Karnak across the Nile to visit the temples of the west bank, and Djeser-Djeseru was the high point of the procession.

The temple also held chapels for Hathor, the goddess of the Theban hills, for Anubis, god of embalming, for the sun god Ra-Horakhty and for the cult of Hatshepsut and her father Thutmose I.

Architecture: three terraces

The temple was approached by a processional causeway lined with sphinxes, running from a valley temple near the cultivated land. In front of the temple lay a garden; pits that once held trees, possibly including myrrh trees brought from Punt, have been found there.

The building rises in three broad terraces linked by central ramps. Each terrace is fronted by a colonnade of square pillars, creating a strong horizontal rhythm that echoes the layered cliffs behind. The plan was based on Mentuhotep’s temple next door, but its scale, symmetry and open colonnades were new.

The upper terrace was fronted by a portico of Osiride statues, colossal figures of Hatshepsut in the form of Osiris, the god of the dead. Behind it lay a columned festival court, an open-air court with an altar for the sun cult, chapels for the royal cult and, cut into the cliff on the main axis, the sanctuary of Amun.

The design is usually credited to Senenmut, Hatshepsut’s steward and a leading figure at her court. He was allowed to place small figures of himself behind doors in the temple and cut a second tomb for himself under the forecourt, whose ceiling bears one of the oldest known astronomical diagrams from Egypt.

The reliefs

The temple’s carved and painted reliefs are among the finest of the 18th Dynasty. On the lower terrace, scenes show the transport of a pair of obelisks on a huge barge from the granite quarries at Aswan.

The middle terrace holds the two most famous cycles. To the south, the Punt Colonnade records the expedition to the land of Punt, showing ships on the Red Sea, houses on stilts, the ruler of Punt and his wife, and Egyptians loading myrrh trees, incense, ebony and animals. To the north, the Birth Colonnade shows the god Amun visiting Hatshepsut’s mother, Queen Ahmose, and the ram-headed god Khnum shaping the child on his potter’s wheel. This “divine birth” story justified Hatshepsut’s right to rule.

At the southern end of the middle terrace stands the chapel of Hathor, whose columns are topped with the face of the goddess, shown with cow’s ears. Its reliefs include Hathor in the form of a cow suckling the young Hatshepsut, another image of her divine status. At the northern end, the chapel of Anubis keeps some of the brightest original paint in the temple, with deep blues, reds and yellows on its ceilings and walls.

The upper terrace shows the great processions of the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, with priests carrying the sacred boat of Amun, musicians and offering bearers. Scenes in the royal cult chapels show Hatshepsut and Thutmose I before tables piled with food, drink and flowers, the offerings meant to sustain them in the afterlife. Together, the reliefs combine the political message of the reign with the religious purpose of the building.

Later damage

Late in the reign of Thutmose III, about 20 years after Hatshepsut’s death, her images and names in the temple were chiselled out and her statues were smashed and dumped in quarries nearby. Thutmose also built a temple of his own, Djeser-Akhet, on higher ground between the temples of Mentuhotep and Hatshepsut, which seems to have taken over some of the festival role.

Under Akhenaten in the 14th century BC, agents of his new religion of the Aten hacked out images and names of Amun throughout the temple. Some of these were recarved by later kings. Rockfalls from the cliffs also caused damage, and an earthquake probably ruined Thutmose III’s temple by the end of the New Kingdom.

In the Ptolemaic period the upper sanctuary was enlarged and rededicated to two deified wise men, Imhotep and Amenhotep son of Hapu, who were visited for healing. In the 7th century AD Coptic Christians built a monastery on the upper terrace, the origin of the Arabic name Deir el-Bahari, “Monastery of the North”.

Excavation and restoration

Auguste Mariette investigated the site in the 1850s and 1860s. The Swiss Egyptologist Édouard Naville cleared the temple for the Egypt Exploration Fund between 1893 and 1906 and published its reliefs in seven volumes. In the 1920s the Metropolitan Museum of Art, under Herbert Winlock, excavated the quarries and causeway and recovered thousands of fragments of the smashed statues, many of which were reassembled.

Since 1961 a Polish-Egyptian mission, founded by Kazimierz Michałowski, has studied and restored the temple. Its members discovered Thutmose III’s temple in 1962 and have rebuilt much of the upper terrace, including the Osiride statues, from scattered blocks. The royal mummy cache found in 1881 lies in a tomb in the cliffs just south of the temple.

The temple is now one of Egypt’s most visited monuments and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ancient Thebes. In November 1997 it was the scene of a terrorist attack in which 62 people, most of them foreign visitors, were killed, an event commemorated by Egypt and the countries whose citizens died.

Timeline

• c. 2000 BC: Mentuhotep II builds his temple and tomb at Deir el-Bahari.
• c. 1479–1458 BC: Hatshepsut’s temple is built during her reign.
• c. 1471 BC: The Punt expedition later shown in the temple takes place.
• c. 1438–1425 BC: Hatshepsut’s images are erased late in Thutmose III’s reign.
• c. 1350–1336 BC: Agents of Akhenaten remove the name and images of Amun.
• 7th century AD: A Coptic monastery is built on the upper terrace.
• 1893–1906: Édouard Naville clears the temple.
• 1961: The Polish-Egyptian restoration mission begins work.

Why it matters

Djeser-Djeseru is a masterpiece of Egyptian architecture and the main record of Hatshepsut’s reign, preserving her own account of her birth, her rule and her famous trade voyage. Its damage traces later political and religious upheavals, from the erasure of a female king to Akhenaten’s revolution, and its long restoration shows how modern archaeology has rebuilt a monument from fragments.