The town of Thebes straddled both banks of the Nile. The habitation quarters, poorly known today, must have been located on the east bank under the modern city of Luxor. Also on the east bank are the two major temple complexes, the temples to Amun and other gods at Karnak and at Luxor (see below). The west bank served different purposes. Some royal palaces were found on this bank beyond the zone of cultivation, but today the region is better known for its cities of the dead, the tombs and the temples devoted to funerary cults, and dwellings for those who working making tombs (Figure 6.4).
Deir el-Bahri lies on the west bank, on the east side of massive limestone cliffs. To the west, on the other side of the cliffs, is found the Valley of the Kings, the desolate burial ground of most New Kingdom rulers. In this striking spot, adjacent to an important mortuary temple built by the pharaoh Mentuhotep II of Dynasty XI, Hatshepsut (reigned ca. 1479—1457 bc) had a
Figure 6.4 Regional plan, Thebes
Magnificent temple erected for the perpetuation of her funerary cult. It marks a new trend, the formal separation of the mortuary temple from the actual burial place, hidden far from the temple. The ruined temple at Deir el-Bahri was largely buried in sand and the debris of later Coptic buildings when members of Napoleon’s expedition examined it in 1798. Serious excavation and restoration work began in the 1890s under the direction of Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville for the Egypt Exploration Fund, and continues today by a Polish/Egyptian team.
Rarely did women rule in their own right in ancient Egypt. Indeed, Hatshepsut began as coregent with her young nephew, Thutmose III, but quickly assuming full control and complete royal regalia, she dominated the government for some twenty years. Although her texts frequently used feminine grammatical gender, she had herself depicted as a man, the expected sex of pharaohs, with the usual ceremonial beard. Her eventual fate is a mystery. Her mummified body has not been conclusively identified, and no one knows whether she died a natural death or was overthrown and killed. We do know that Thutmose III (reigned ca. 1479—1425 BC, including the period of Hatshepsut’s co-regency) regained power, becoming one of the celebrated military leaders of New Kingdom Egypt. But bad blood remained between them, it has been proposed, for he did his best to eradicate all public mention of her by having her depictions and names hacked away or replaced by his own.
The temple is laid out on a series of three terraces (Figures 6.5 and 6.6). With its use of pillared facades, the layout resembles models seen in the Middle Kingdom, both in the adjacent temple of Mentuhotep II and in tombs or nobles elsewhere in Upper Egypt, and differs, as will be seen, from the plan typical of later cult temples. The relief sculptures that decorate the walls sheltering the colonnades promote the accomplishments of Hatshepsut, presenting a reign full of achievement despite the absence of the usual masculine exploits of war and hunting.
Figure 6.5 Plan, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahri
The lowest terrace consisted of a large walled area originally planted with trees. A double colonnade, twenty-two columns arranged in two rows, lies at the rear of this terrace, divided into two sections by the ramp that ascends to the second terrace. Painted reliefs on the rear wall of the colonnade show the transport of the two obelisks Hatshepsut had made for the temple of Amun in Karnak. The second terrace, smaller than the first, is itself bordered on the rear by a colonnade (the Second Colonnade), again two sections of eleven columns arranged in two rows. The walls of the south half display in painted reliefs scenes from the expedition to Punt, a distant land that provided Egyptians with myrrh trees for the temple terraces, incense for religious ceremonies, wild animals, electrum, hides, and timber. This delightful and unparalleled ethnographic record illustrates scenes of the village of round huts on stilts where the Egyptians were received by the chief, his obese wife, possibly a victim of elephantiasis, and their children. In the north section of the Second Colonnade additional reliefs recount the divine birth of Hatshepsut. In order to substantiate her right to rule, she asserted that her true father was not the pharaoh Thutmose I, but the god Amun who entered the body of Thutmose I at the crucial moment of conception. The full story was depicted here.
The Second Colonnade is flanked by two chapels, one on the south to the goddess Hathor, and another, on the north, to the god Anubis. The portico of the Anubis Chapel and the colonnade that borders the north side of the second terrace just beyond the chapel are lined with a series of columns that with their faceted sides and capitals, like columns from subsidiary buildings in the Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara, recall later Greek columns. Later Greeks were indeed greatly influenced by Egyptian stone working traditions in architecture and sculpture, and models such as these would have made a lasting impression.
A second ramp leads to the Third or Upper Terrace, an open-air court surrounded on four sides by a portico. The sanctuary of the temple lies to the rear, cut into the limestone cliff, later enlarged in Ptolemaic (Hellenistic) times, a small dark room typical of the Egyptian holy of holies.
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