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Egypt · 2025

Day 10 - Temple of Hatshepsut

Tiered colonnades of an ancient temple hug the sheer cliff face.
Colorful hot air balloons float above a sandy necropolis at dawn. A striking temple facade of columns stands before an empty paved square. Rainbow-hued hot air balloons hover above mud-brick ruins and desert hills. A carved entrance is cut into the face of a weathered cliff. A sandstone mortuary temple rises in tiered terraces against a rugged desert cliff. A grand terraced temple stands in perfect symmetry beneath a bright blue sky. A man in a white robe and blue turban rests on a stone wall. Two colossal statues with crossed arms flank a dark temple entrance. A sandstone falcon statue stares with faint red traces around its eye. A hot air balloon floats over a misty, palm-dotted river valley. A woman stands on the central stairway before a terraced temple facade. A striped hot air balloon hovers over green fields and palm trees. A shadowed passage leads past faded Egyptian paintings toward a dark doorway. Faded figures and symbols decorate a vaulted ceiling arching overhead. Two seated figures face each other across a carved offering table. A band of blue and red stars tops a wall of faded hieroglyphs. Stars in blue and red spread across a cracked plaster ceiling. A dark painted arch of stars curves above faded hieroglyph bands. Dense rows of carved hieroglyphs fill the weathered stone surface. A scarab beetle carved in an oval sits among worn hieroglyphs. Weathered sandstone relief shows faded red-painted figures and hieroglyphs. A scarab beetle and a falcon sit inside carved Egyptian cartouches. Tourists and local men stand at the foot of a sandstone temple gate. A stone fragment at the temple wall shows a falcon beside a red sun disk. A wooden sign announces the Polish-Egyptian conservation mission at Hatshepsut Temple. A carved falcon rises from the face of a sandstone pillar under a blue sky. A man ties his white head cloth against a hazy desert backdrop. A wide stone ramp leads past rocky cliffs toward a hazy valley below. Colossal pharaoh statues line the ancient temple colonnade. Sunlit stone carving weathered by ages. Pharaoh statues march along the temple terrace. A pharaoh's face keeps traces of red paint. The pharaoh's crossed arms hold the royal emblems. Three pharaohs gaze from the colonnade. Two pharaoh statues flank the temple pillars. A lone pharaoh statue keeps traces of red paint. Ancient Egyptian temple columns with Hathor faces rise beneath a clear blue sky. A sandstone temple wall densely carved with rows of hieroglyphs and relief figures. A goddess face with cow ears is carved beside profile figures in weathered stone. A red fire extinguisher and thin rope sit against the rough stone walls of a tomb. Two carved profile heads and a bird figure fill a framed stone niche. Slanted sunbeams fall across columns covered in weathered hieroglyphs and faded paint. Old pigments still colour a winged figure beneath a red sun disk. Sandstone pillars bearing carved falcons stand in a row under a bright blue sky. Weathered sunken reliefs of heads and zigzag hieroglyphs stretch across warm stone. Colonnaded temple terraces with statues sit beneath a sheer beige rock face. A vivid blue falcon spans a band above a frieze of hieroglyphs. Golden stars dot a deep blue ceiling above a band of hieroglyphs. A wide blue ceiling, speckled with gold stars, crowns a hieroglyph band. A great bird with red-and-blue wings glides above a row of carved signs. A winged vulture hovers over a frieze of cobras, glyphs, and colored bands. Square doorways and caves are carved into a dry beige cliff face. A domed arcaded shrine stands alone amid a barren desert. Colonnaded terraces of an ancient temple carved into a sheer cliff. Cracked mudbrick walls and trenches trace an old desert burial ground. A grand weathered mudbrick arch frames the desert horizon. Ancient carved hieroglyphs and a royal cartouche decorate a doorway. A long stone stair climbs between mudbrick walls toward a distant arch. Ruined brick walls and a domed arch stand on a sandy desert plain. An old brick arch and walls look toward a terraced temple in the far hills. A dark rock-cut tomb entrance surrounded by artifact blocks wrapped in protective tarps. A mud-brick shelter with a leafy tree and parked motorcycles beneath a towering desert mountain. The multi-level colonnades of Hatshepsut's temple rise before a sheer desert cliff. A row of dark rock-cut tomb entrances runs across a sunlit desert slope. A rugged desert hillside dotted with carved tomb entrances, low walls, and a dirt track. An old black-and-white photograph of a man in a suit and hat, set on a stone panel in a garden. Wooden beams and green glass-front cabinets hold pottery inside a heritage house museum. A vintage office holds a writing desk, typewriter, oil lamp, and a green safe on tiled floors. A hanging topographical map of El Qurna in warm terracotta tones. A black-and-white photograph of two men digging inside a timber-lined tomb. A man in a pith helmet reads while seated in a woven chair. Two men inspect a golden artifact inside a decorated tomb. Tall palms mirror themselves in a still water pool. A luggage label showing a Nile steamer and camel riders. A white canopy bed fills a sunlit room. An early motor car with passengers stands before the Great Pyramid. A black-and-white historical photograph shows Howard Carter's domed mudbrick house with a vintage car parked in front. An engraved slate plaque on a stone pedestal bears a dedication made in England for archaeologist Howard Carter. A large gold-framed portrait hangs beside a wall clock and antique lamp inside the house museum. A black-and-white archival photo in a gold frame shows a group of men examining a tomb excavation. An ancient Egyptian burial chamber holds a red stone sarcophagus beneath walls of hieroglyphs and painted deities. Visitors wander a warmly lit gallery lined with framed archival photographs. A framed Egyptian painting depicts a procession of gods and a pharaoh beneath hieroglyphs. An archival photograph displays the dismantled horse-drawn chariot discovered in a royal tomb. An archival photograph shows a black jackal figure standing atop an ornate canopy. An old photograph shows ancient chariots and large wooden wheels heaped in a storeroom. A historical photograph captures a tomb chamber heaped with boxes and round offering vessels. A dark archival photograph centres on a barred gate glowing with light from beyond. Vivid painted figures and hieroglyphs rise above a large dark stone sarcophagus. An archival photo shows a black seated jackal statue on either side of a doorway. An old and moody photograph shows a shadowy figure with a staff in a dim chamber. A historical photo shows two men bending over an opened sarcophagus that holds a mummy. A framed black-and-white photograph of an ancient royal mummy and golden mask hangs on a cream wall. Framed prints of a golden pharaoh mask and bilingual placards line a dusty wall. A sunlit sandstone temple with carved figures rises behind a row of palms in the desert. A roadside cafe and alabaster workshop with blue chairs and drink fridges line a dusty street. Visitors enter through a vast sandstone pylon covered in hieroglyphs and carved reliefs. A seated dark stone figure of a lion-headed goddess rests against a wall of hieroglyphs. Large figures and hieroglyphs are carved across a sandstone wall under a diagonal shadow. A sunlit stone wall crowded with carved figures and hieroglyphs meets a shadowed corner. Close view of a crumbling ancient temple wall carved with hieroglyphs and reliefs. A towering ancient Egyptian temple gateway rises above a paved courtyard. A massive carved wall glowing with hieroglyphs surrounds a dark temple doorway. A carved pharaoh strides in a heroic pose across the temple wall. Vividly painted temple ceiling shows winged sun disks and sacred symbols. A temple courtyard of hieroglyph-covered walls surrounds a central doorway. A pharaoh presents offerings to gods carved across the temple wall. Painted temple ceiling pattern of winged motifs and royal cartouches. A weathered sandstone lintel carved with a winged sun disc and royal cartouche names flanked by winged figures. A sunlit Egyptian temple wall is covered edge to edge in columns of carved hieroglyphic text, broken by a large hollow. A row of weathered sandstone pillars and standing figures lines the edge of an ancient Egyptian temple court. Seen from below, a great Egyptian temple wall is covered in deeply cut hieroglyphs against a clear blue sky. Tall sandstone pillars bear sculpted images of pharaohs wrapped like mummies beneath the open sky. A giant pharaoh in a double crown dominates the scene, holding bound figures beside rows of smaller captives. Immense columns with bell-shaped capitals tower beneath a lintel still bearing faint traces of blue and green paint. A forest of massive carved pillars fills the frame, with a text-covered wall rising behind and tiny visitors below. A weathered stone column capital carved with lotus plants and royal cartouches under a clear blue sky. A faded painted relief of a blue-headed bird beside rows of hieroglyphs on a stone temple wall. Giant mummiform statues of pharaohs stand between the pillars of a sunlit temple colonnade. Tourists walk toward the tall carved gateway of an ancient Egyptian temple pylon. Rows of winged sun discs with spread feathers decorate a brightly painted temple ceiling. Round carved columns and shadowed doorways frame the interior courtyard of a stone temple. Huge columns with painted papyrus capitals line the sunlit hall of an ancient temple. A carved oval cartouche framing hieroglyphs and a seated figure fills the foreground of a stone column. Tall carved columns rise around a sunlit temple courtyard. A weathered blue ceiling beams down over hieroglyph-carved walls. Rows of painted figures carry offerings before a seated official. A wall of hieroglyph columns meets rows of carved standing figures. Looking up a thick column carved with a ruler and hieroglyphs. Square pillars clad in hieroglyphs line a sunny temple courtyard. Dense columns of hieroglyphs cover a wall above two painted figures. A painted temple ceiling shows a boat scene, lotus flowers and hieroglyphs. A weathered stone surface densely carved with rows of Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols. Ancient reliefs of robed figures line a wall beneath a deep blue ceiling. A worn carved stone block stands in front of a sunlit temple courtyard. Tall carved columns and a low wall recede across a sunlit Egyptian temple courtyard. Tall temple columns carry bright blue and red reliefs of standing deities. A painted column and wall show a jackal-headed deity under a starry blue ceiling. A green-winged sun disk spreads over a beam, with blue cartouches and an ibis below. Dark carved columns frame a bright courtyard and a stone doorway beyond. Looking up through an ancient temple roof opening at the sky. A weathered stone temple facade carved with hieroglyphs and figures. Tall fluted columns banded in blue and red paint. Colossal columns adorned with painted gods and cartouches. A faded column surface showing cartouches and an old scrawled name. A bright courtyard bordered by carved columns and reliefs. A standing pharaoh before a falcon-headed god wearing a sun disk. Rows of square piers engraved with hieroglyphs and figures. Carved deities and colorful hieroglyphic inscriptions still brighten an ancient stone wall. A temple chamber whose painted walls carry carvings of pharaohs and deities. Raised carvings of rulers and gods, framed by hieroglyphs and a sun disk. Massive carved columns rise above a bright open temple courtyard. A sun disk and cobra emblems flank an engraved royal cartouche. A lone visitor photographs a statue sheltered between colossal carved columns. A calm riverfront walkway lined with lampposts beside a wide river. People stroll a lamplit boardwalk beside multi-deck river cruise ships. A long stone sphinx avenue stretches toward twin-towered church domes. Men with motorbikes stand before a yellow facade draped with laundry. A white Toyota minibus sits by a trash bin with a temple pylon behind palm trees. White-and-blue taxis park outside a cafe with Coca-Cola fridges and a Luxor sign. Two palms frame a low golden sun above a dark field of sphinxes. Young children sit and climb along a decorative yellow railing before a tree-lined street. A pale minaret balcony under a carved wooden roof and crescent finial against blue sky. Huge seated pharaoh statues guard a towering pylon beside a hieroglyph-covered obelisk. Giant seated pharaoh statues glow in warm light before an ancient temple wall. A pharaoh's crowned head fills the frame against a hieroglyph-carved wall. A busy crowd gathers in a plaza beside a tall tree and white city buildings. Sunken relief carvings of figures and hieroglyphs decorate a temple column. Enormous temple columns rise around a seated pharaoh statue in golden light. Carved hieroglyphic architraves span the gaps between heavy columns. Three tall statues of pharaohs stand between the columns of a temple hall. A colossal seated pharaoh is silhouetted in warm light against the sky. Sunlit ancient Egyptian columns carved with hieroglyphs rise against a clear blue sky. A carved relief shows two profile figures framed among hieroglyphs on weathered stone. Two colossal, heavily weathered stone heads of ancient rulers stand side by side. A colossal open-bell column capital rises overhead against a deep blue sky. A close view of a huge bell-shaped papyrus capital, its weathered bands lit by the sun. A vast bell-shaped column capital glows in warm light beneath a deep blue sky. A row of massive columns supporting stone architraves glows in evening light. A vast illuminated hall of columns glows at night beneath a deep blue sky, crowds passing through. A weathered carved stone capital glows warmly against a deep blue sky. Twin fluted capitals hold up a stone lintel against a deep blue sky. A dark stone beam rests across weathered column capitals. Great fluted columns stand in rows under a darkening blue sky. Warm uplight bathes a columned hall while figures gather below. Worn hieroglyphs and reliefs run across a columned wall face. Fluted columns and stone lintels stand beside silhouetted palm trees. Rows of fluted columns show carved reliefs lit from below. Massive carved pillars standing in an ancient Egyptian temple at dusk. A stone pillar with an ornate capital stands before an ancient carved wall. Massive columns and stone beams support a dark temple ceiling. A sandstone wall covered in rows of ancient carvings and faded paint. A carved pharaoh figure stands in profile amid lines of hieroglyphs. An interior wall is covered in colorful figures and ancient inscriptions. A ribbed stone column meets a carved wall and heavy ceiling beams. Carved figures, a sun disk, and hieroglyphs fill the temple wall. A weathered sandstone wall carved with four royal figures in profile beneath columns of hieroglyphs. A temple wall covered in closely packed columns of hieroglyphic carvings beside a dark pillar. An ancient temple interior where several stone walls are covered in figures and hieroglyph inscriptions. A temple wall patterned with a tight grid of repeated hieroglyphic symbols and a royal cartouche. A broad sandstone wall covered with hieroglyphs and line-drawn figures in horizontal registers. A rough, partly broken temple wall bearing horizontal bands of carvings and a winged sun disk above. A large carved figure with a headdress stands beneath a winged sun disk, traces of red pigment on the stone. An ornamental frieze carved with outstretched feathered wings, oval cartouches and basket motifs. An eye and a carved face stand out among Egyptian hieroglyphs in warm golden stone. Frozen birds, including a falcon and an owl, are engraved in golden stone. A lotus bloom, radiating sun rays, and a carved face glow in golden hieroglyphs. A carved figure with traces of red pigment reaches for a staff beside hieroglyph columns. Carved figures and a scepter appear among neat hieroglyphic inscriptions. Neat rows of bowl, bird, and plant glyphs fill a gridded temple wall. Rows and columns of bowls, birds, and eyes cover the weathered stone wall. A line of carved cobra figures runs along a band of ancient relief. Close-up of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs carved into warm sandstone. A weathered sandstone wall covered in rows of carved hieroglyphs. Palm trees and a blue building seen through a stone opening at night. Two carved figures and hieroglyphs on a worn temple relief. Two colossal stone statue heads glow under night spotlights. An enormous ancient stone pylon glows under floodlights in the dark. Two mirrored figures flank a central symbol in a carved niche. Tall figures of deities and hieroglyphs carved into a round column. A floodlit colossal pharaoh statue with a double crown stands before a hieroglyph-carved column in the dark. A pharaoh statue with a nemes headdress stands between two colossal hieroglyph-covered columns at night. Two colossal enthroned pharaoh statues flank a floodlit temple court beneath a night sky. A tall hieroglyph-covered obelisk rises before floodlit pharaoh statues and a massive stone wall at night.
Journal Notes

General

The mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, Djeser-Djeseru (“the Holy of Holies”, the “house of millions of years” of the female king Maatkare Hatshepsut), stands in the bay of Deir el-Bahri on the west bank of the Nile at ancient Thebes, opposite modern Luxor, hugging the foot of the great limestone cliff beneath the pyramidal peak of el-Qurn, the highest summit of the Theban hills. Its axis points eastwards across the river to the eighth pylon of Karnak; immediately to the south stands the older terraced temple of Mentuhotep II, and behind the massif, invisible from the forecourt, lies the Valley of the Kings.

The building rises in three great terraces, joined by ramps that split the colonnaded porticoes, from a walled lower court at the desert edge to the sanctuary set against the cliff at the head of the upper terrace. Almost the whole fabric is limestone, with accents of red granite and sandstone, and the design has no true parallel in Egyptian temple architecture. The work is traditionally ascribed to Senenmut, the royal steward who oversaw the king’s works, although Egyptologists note that the evidence for a single architect is circumstantial. Construction occupied roughly the seventh to the twentieth regnal years of her reign, and the finished complex is counted among the masterpieces of ancient architecture.

The temple served the cult of Amun-Re, to whom Hatshepsut dedicated it as “a garden for my father Amun”, together with Hathor, Anubis and the mortuary cults of the king and of her father Thutmose I. Ruined and buried for centuries, the monument has been rebuilt in stages since the nineteenth century, and since 1961 the Polish-Egyptian mission of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology has consolidated and restored its terraces. In 1979 the whole of ancient Thebes, the temples of Karnak and Luxor on the east bank and the great necropolis of the west bank, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as “Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis” (ref. 87).

For the visitor the temple is above all a matter of light: it faces the sunrise, and its pale terraces warm through the morning while the great cliff behind remains in shadow. The bay opens eastwards onto the cultivated plain and the Nile, while to the west the massif hides the Valley of the Kings behind the ridge. A road links the monuments of the desert edge with the cultivation and the river crossing at Luxor, and the Ramesseum of Ramesses II lies further south along the same route; the band of cliffs and plain from the terraced temples to the tomb-filled hills forms the archaeological landscape of the Theban west bank.

History

When he died in the early fifteenth century BC leaving only a young son by a lesser wife, she governed first as regent for Thutmose III and then, within a few years, assumed the full titles of a king of Upper and Lower Egypt, an unprecedented role for a royal woman. Her reign of roughly two decades (c. 1479-1458 BC) was remembered for peace, for the trading expedition to the Land of Punt, and for intense building at Thebes: above all at Karnak, where she raised the eighth pylon and pairs of obelisks, and on the west bank, where the terraced temple of Deir el-Bahri was her most personal monument.

The bay was sacred ground long before Hatshepsut: its cliffs were a cult place of the cow goddess Hathor, mistress of the western necropolis. In the Eleventh Dynasty King Mentuhotep II (c. 2061-2010 BC), who reunited Egypt after the First Intermediate Period, built his own terraced mortuary temple there, Akh-sut Nebhepetre, with his tomb cut into the rock behind it. That complex, immediately south of Hatshepsut’s, was her direct model (the cliffside temple of terraces, colonnades and ramps was Mentuhotep’s invention); Thutmose III later added a third temple, Djeser-Akhet, above hers.

The complex recalled the pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom: a valley temple at the edge of the cultivation joined to the temple proper by a causeway about a kilometre long, with a barque station on the way and sphinxes (several bearing the king’s head) lining the upper path, the oldest attested sphinx avenue in Egypt. Within, the central axis belonged to Amun-Re, whose sanctuary cut against the cliff received the barque of the god each year; the king’s mortuary cult occupied the south side of the festival court, the solar cult court lay to the north, and shrines to Hathor and Anubis stood at the ends of the middle terrace. Her own tomb, KV20, was driven into the massif beneath el-Qurn in echo of the pyramid age.

The walls carried some of the most extensive relief cycles of the period. On the middle terrace the south-west portico depicted the expedition to Punt of the ninth regnal year (the ships and wonders of the incense country, with living myrrh trees carried home in baskets to be planted on the temple terraces), while the north-west portico showed the king’s divine birth, the oldest known scene of its kind, in which Amun-Re visits her mother Ahmose and the gods preside over her creation, legitimising her rule. Below, the porticoes recorded the transport of the obelisks to Karnak and the king as a sphinx crushing her enemies. In the Beautiful Festival of the Valley the barque of Amun-Re crossed from the eighth pylon of Karnak each year and rested overnight in the sanctuary.

The temple’s later history was violent. About two decades after Hatshepsut’s death, in the reign of Thutmose III, her images and names were systematically erased and her statues smashed and dumped in quarry pits; the campaign was abandoned within a few years, and its motives are still debated. In the Amarna period the figures of Amun and other gods were defaced, to be restored under Tutankhamun, Horemheb and Ramesses II. An earthquake in the ninth century BC damaged the fabric; priests of Amun and Montu were buried within the temple, and the cache of royal mummies hidden in the cliffs to the south (TT320) was found only in 1881. Under the Ptolemies the sanctuary became a healing chapel of the deified architects Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imhotep, and from the sixth to the eighth century AD a Coptic monastery of Saint Phoibammon occupied the terraces; hence the modern name Deir el-Bahri, “the northern monastery”. Rediscovered in the eighteenth century, excavated by Mariette, by Naville’s Egypt Exploration Fund expedition of 1893-1906 (on whose staff the young Howard Carter served) and by the Metropolitan Museum under Winlock, the temple has been restored by the Polish mission since 1961.

Geology

Thebes lies where the Nile, swinging eastwards against the desert, has cut its valley into the Eocene limestone plateau of Upper Egypt. The west-bank massif is built of the Theban Limestone Formation (early Eocene marine limestones, about forty-eight million years old, forming a stepped escarpment up to some 340 metres thick with chalky beds and horizons of black chert). Its highest summit, el-Qurn (450 metres; in antiquity Ta Dehent, “the peak”), rises above Deir el-Bahri in an almost perfect natural pyramid, one reason why, some Egyptologists believe, the Valley of the Kings was laid out at its foot on the far side of the massif.

Deir el-Bahri occupies a natural amphitheatre in the foot of that escarpment: a bay, opening to the south-east, about 200 metres wide and cut some 140 metres into the hillside, backed by a near-vertical cliff about 100 metres high. The bay is the work of water and gravity: fluvial erosion along an ancient wadi, rockfall and sliding along the fractures of the limestone, and millennia of desert rainfall rounding the rock into the concave circus that frames the temple. The terraces follow the natural ledges of the hill, the rear chambers were partly cut into the living rock, and the mountain itself plays the part of the pyramid.

Three successive rock formations underlie the temple. Lowest lies the Tarawan Chalk of Palaeocene age, a soft white chalk buried beneath the plain and visible in the excavations of the neighbouring Asasif. Above it comes the Esna Shale of the late Palaeocene and early Eocene, up to about 60 metres of grey-green shales with streaks of gypsum, which outcrops at the foot of the cliff and forms the floor of the bay, the very ground on which the temple stands. The cliff itself is the lowest member of the Theban Limestone, roughly 90 metres of thin-bedded, argillaceous and nodular limestones with pinkish marls, heavily fractured. The whole stack is what engineering geologists call a brittle-on-weak structure: a competent, jointed limestone riding upon a soft, clay-rich shale, a configuration that predisposes the hillside to slow creep and to sudden failure.

The builders had to come to terms with that geology. The temple was built almost entirely of limestone, much of it quarried in the immediate neighbourhood, where the soft beds furnished an easily worked stone that hardens on exposure; red granite and sandstone were brought in for doorways, columns and shrines, and a single architrave is of violet sandstone said to have come from the temple of Mentuhotep II. The ground, however, has never been still: vertical joints in four directions and normal faults related to the opening of the Red Sea divide the cliff into towers and chimneys that shed stones onto the bay; the swelling clays of the Esna Shale, which can expand by about a tenth of their volume when wetted, have pushed and buckled the ancient walls (as recently as 1986 a reconstructed casing wall of the upper court collapsed), and the earthquake of the ninth century BC shows how old the seismic risk is. The stability of the cliff is today monitored by the Polish mission with laser scanning and vibration instruments, a dialogue with the geology of the site that began with the builders themselves.

Things to See

Hot-air balloons lift from the desert edge of the Theban west bank at sunrise and drift across the necropolis. From the air the bay of Deir el-Bahri opens below the cliff of el-Qurn, the pale terraces of the temple stand out against the dark rock, and the cultivated plain with the Nile beyond sets the monument within the wider landscape of ancient Thebes.

The visitor crosses the floor of the bay to the eastern front of the temple, where the walled lower court gives onto the first terrace. A central ramp climbs between the colonnaded porticoes; sandstone falcons of the ramps still show traces of red paint, and colossal standing statues with crossed arms flank the dark openings of the colonnade. Beside the entrance a board of the Polish-Egyptian mission records the restoration of the terraces carried out since 1961.

The middle terrace is the richest part of the temple. Its long porticoes carry the great relief cycles in close-set sunken relief: the expedition to Punt of the ninth regnal year occupies the south-west portico, with its ships, the wonders of the incense country and living myrrh trees carried home in baskets, while the north-west portico shows the divine birth of the king, the oldest known scene of its kind. Traces of the original colouring survive on many walls, with red ochre on carved faces and winged sun-discs. Chapels of Hathor and Anubis close the two ends of the terrace, and the columns of the Hathor chapel carry capitals carved with the cow-eared face of the goddess.

A further ramp leads up to the upper terrace, the innermost part of the temple, set directly against the cliff. The upper colonnade is lined with colossal Osiride statues, mummiform images of the king with the crook and flail crossed upon the breast, several of them still tinted with red pigment on face and crown. On the main axis the sanctuary of Amun-Re, cut into the foot of the cliff, received the barque of the god in the Beautiful Festival of the Valley; the rooms around the court are painted rather than carved, with vaulted ceilings scattered with stars on a deep blue ground, winged falcons and vultures above the doors, friezes of cobras and columns covered with hieroglyphs.

Immediately south of the Hatshepsut temple stands the older terraced temple of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty, whose colonnades and ramps provided the direct model for the later building. Around the two temples the bay opens onto the surrounding necropolis: the slopes of the facing hills are honeycombed with the entrances of rock-cut tombs, the low domes and crumbling arches of mud-brick tombs and old village houses rise from the plain, and open excavations in the neighbouring Asasif continue to expose the cemetery ground. Beyond the ridge to the west, out of sight from the terraces, lies the Valley of the Kings.

At the edge of the cultivation, a short distance from the temple, stands the restored expedition house of Howard Carter, where the discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun lived during his seasons of excavation in the 1920s. The interior is arranged as a museum of the discovery: the study preserves its desk, typewriter and the map of the Qurna district, and wall displays recall the excavation of KV62, from Lord Carnarvon at rest and Mace and Callender at work over a golden object to the antechamber heaped with treasure, the gilded shrine of Anubis with its guardian jackal, the dismantled chariots and the king’s mummy in its opened coffin. A memorial plaque outside the house honours Carter himself.

Further south along the desert edge stands the ruined memorial temple of Ramesses II, the Ramesseum. Its sandstone pylon still towers above the plain; the courts are lined with colossal Osiride statues of the king and ranks of columns, and the great hypostyle hall preserves papyrus columns bearing painted figures of the king before the gods, with traces of a starred blue ceiling. A seated figure of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet keeps its place among the ruins, and the walls carry the battle and smiting scenes of royal propaganda in deep sunken relief, faded but legible.

On the east bank of the Nile, the temple of Luxor, raised by Amenhotep III and enlarged by Ramesses II, stands within the modern town, its front approached by a restored avenue of sphinxes; the medieval mosque of Abu el-Haggag rises among the ancient walls, and an obelisk and colossal seated statues of the king stand before the first pylon. The riverside promenade of the town runs past moored cruise boats below the hotels, and after dark the floodlights pick out the columned courts and statues of the temple against the night sky.

References

  1. Arnold, D. (1991). Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry. New York: Oxford University Press.
  2. Naville, É. (1894-1908). The Temple of Deir el Bahari. 7 vols. London: Egypt Exploration Fund.
  3. Roehrig, C. H., Dreyfus, R., & Keller, C. A. (eds) (2005). Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  4. Said, R. (1990). The Geology of Egypt. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema.
  5. UNESCO World Heritage Centre (1979). Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis. World Heritage List, ref. 87. whc.unesco.org/en/list/87/
  6. Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw (2021). Geological appraisal of the Theban cliff overhanging the Hatshepsut Temple at Deir el-Bahari. Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean, vol. 30. pam-journal.pl/en/issues/30-vol-30-issue-1-special-issue/geological-appraisal-of-the-theban-cliff-overhanging-the-hatshepsut-temple-at-deir-el-bahari
  7. Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (n.d.). Howard Carter House, West Bank, Luxor (online monument dossier). egymonuments.gov.eg/en/monuments/haward-carter-and-his-house-at-thebes/
  8. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortuary_temple_of_Hatshepsut
  9. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Deir el-Bahari. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_el-Bahari
  10. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Hatshepsut. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut
  11. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Senenmut. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senenmut
  12. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Land of Punt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt
  13. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Mentuhotep II. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentuhotep_II
  14. Wikipedia contributors (2026). El Qurn. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Qurn
  15. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Valley of the Kings. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Kings
  16. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Ramesseum. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesseum
  17. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Luxor Temple. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Temple