As ruler, Hatshepsut inaugurated building projects that far outstripped those of her predecessors. The list of sites touched by Thutmose I and II was expanded in Upper Egypt, to include places that the Ahmosid rulers had favoured: Kom Ombo, Nekhen (Hierakon-polis), and Elkab in particular, but also Armant and Elephantine. Both Hatshepsut and Thutmose III left numerous remains in Nubia: at Qasr Ibrim, at Sai (a seated statue of the queen recalling those of Ahmose and Amenhotep I), Semna, Faras, Quban, and especially Buhen, where the queen built for Homs of Buhen a peripteral temple of a type common in the mid-18th Dynasty. The scenes on the walls of the temple originally included figures of both Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, but he later replaced her name with his own and that of his father and grandfather. The Buhen temple (now entirely moved to the Khartoum Museum) contains scenes of Hatshepsut’s coronation and veneration of her father.
Memphis may have received attention from Hatshepsut as ruler. An alabaster jar fragment from the region of the Ptah temple has been identified, but, more significantly, the colossal Egyptian alabaster sphinx that sits within the south wall of the Ramessid temple precinct may have formed part of an earlier approach to the temple and was very likely accompanied by a second sphinx. The Hatnub quarries, probable source of stone for the sphinx, were located in Middle Egypt, not very far from another of her monuments, the rock-cut shrine at Beni Hasan that is now called the Speos Artemidos. Apart from the evidence of quarrying at Hatnub, there is no record of i8th-Dynasty kings building in Middle Egypt before Hatshepsut, and her lengthy inscription at Speos Artemidos documented that she was the first to restore temples in the area since the destructive days of the wars with the Hyksos. During those wars. Middle Egypt was a strategic region, owing to the roads stretching through the Western Desert to oases, and thence south to Nubia.
Hatshepsut claimed in her inscription to have rebuilt temples at Hebenu (the capital of the Oryx nome), at Hermopolis, and at Cusae, and to have acted for the lioness-goddess Pakhet sacred to the region around the Speos itself. This work must have been carried out under the supervision of Djehuty, overseer of the treasury and also nomarch in Herwer in Middle Egypt, as well as overseer of priests of Thoth in Hermopolis. The inscriptions in his tomb at Dra Abu el-Naga mention the numerous works he supervised on behalf of Hatshepsut, and invoke a number of regional deities, including Hathor of Cusae. The gods of those cult centres (Homs, Thoth, and Hathor, respectively) therefore received—like the other deities of Nubia and Egypt—a new share of the economic resources of Egypt.
However, no site received more attention from Hatshepsut than Thebes. The temple of Kamak grew once more under her supervision, with the constmction work being directed by a number of officials, including Hapuseneb (her high priest of Amun), Djehuty (the overseer of the treasury, mentioned above), Puyemra (the second priest of Amun), and, of course, Senenmut (the royal steward, also mentioned above). With the country evidently at peace during most of the twenty years of her reign, Hatshepsut was able to exploit the wealth of Egypt’s natural resources, as well as those of Nubia. Gold flowed in from the eastern deserts and the south; the precious stone quarries were in operation, Gebel el-Silsila began to be worked in earnest for sandstone, cedar was imported from the Levant, and ebony came from Africa (by way of Punt, perhaps). In the inscriptions of the queen and her officials, the monuments and the materials used to make them were specifically detailed at some length. Clearly Hatshepsut was pleased with the amount and variety of luxury goods that she could acquire and donate in Amun’s honour; so much so that she had a scene carved at Deir el-Bahri to show the quantity of exotic goods brought from Punt. Likewise, Djehuty detailed the bounties from Punt that Hatshepsut donated to Amun, and he also described the electrum from the mines in the Eastern Desert, with which he was entrusted to embellish Karnak. Djehuty, Hapuseneb, and Puyemra all described participating in the making of the ebony shrine donated at Mut’s temple of Isheru at Karnak. Work in that temple was conducted for Hatshepsut by Senen-mut, whose name occurs on a gate excavated there, but Hapuseneb also left a statue in the precinct.
At Karnak Hatshepsut left, most significantly in terms of her personal imprimatur, the Eighth Pylon, a new southern gateway to the temple precinct. Lying along the north-south processional way that connected Karnak central to the Mut precinct, the new sandstone pylon was the first stone-built one on that route. Ironically, evidence of Hatshepsut’s building effort is today invisible, since the face of the pylon was erased and redecorated in the first years of Amenhotep II (1427-1400 BC), son of Thutmose III. Nevertheless, Hatshepsut’s desire to create a new main entrance was part of a grander plan, designed to ensure that her involvement with the temple would not be forgotten easily. By connecting Karnak to Mut’s temple, the queen was perhaps deliberately shifting attention away from ’Thutmose IPs gateway before the fourth Pylon. She likewise built a temple in the north-south alley dedicated to Amun-Ra-Kamutef a creator form of the god. Taken together, her constructions at Luxor temple, to the south, which housed the yearly royal renewal festival, the Mut temple, where Amun’s consort resided, and the Kamutef shrine formed a set of buildings in which Hatshepsut could describe and celebrate her birth from Amun, gain the favour of the deities for her rule, and expand the claim to divinity for the kingship itself
Elsewhere in Karnak central Hatshepsut had a palace built for her ritual activities, and she constructed a series of rooms around the central bark shrine where she had depicted her purification and acceptance by the gods. Precisely where she had her great quartzite bark shrine set up remains an issue of debate, but it is now being reconstructed in the Open Air Museum at Karnak. ’This shrine bears depictions of the processions associated with the Opet Festival (in which Amun of Karnak visited Luxor temple) and the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. During the latter festival, Amun left Karnak to travel westwards to Deir el-Bahri and the temples of other rulers. This festival became the most prized one on the Theban west bank during the New Kingdom.
Hatshepsut had a tomb excavated in the Valley of the Kings for herself as ruler. Tomb KV 20 appears to be the earliest tomb in the valley, and Hatshepsut had it enlarged to accommodate both her own sarcophagus and a second that had been initially carved for herself but then recarved for her father Thutmose I. Both Hatsheput and Thutmose I may have initially been laid to rest there, but Thutmose III later removed Thutmose I’s body to KV 38, which he had built for a similar purpose. The confusion of multiple tombs and sarcophagi for Hatshepsut is not entirely at an end, but research by Luc Gabolde and others has contributed to a better understanding of early work in the Valley of the Kings. The queen also built a temple to Amun at Medinet Habu at the southern end of Thebes. Completed by Thutmose III, this chapel housed an important cult of the god on the west, becoming part of the regular festival processional cycle which included Deir el-Bahri and Karnak, and later also involved Osiris.
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