The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir El-Bahari Book

The temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari is in many respects unique. In a stroke of genius, Senenmut, the architect of the Queen, has embedded this monument into the landscape in a way quite novel in his time and unsurpassed ever since. The three terraces with their mighty colonnades and the huge protective shelf surmounting them were melted into the tremendous cliff raising above. The nature and the art were thus made into one.A mere fifty metres behind the rock wall of Deir el-Bahari the Valley of Kings harboured the hidden treasures of dead royalty, including Hatshepsut herself. She let the innermost sanctuary to be hollowed into the rock, even closer to her resting place. The statue of Amun was brought here once a year from across the Nile and rested in the temple which the Queen prepared for a perpetual train of offerings to be brought for her after she died.This was not to happen. The nephew of Hatshepsut, frustrated by his long waiting for the crown, once he assumed power as Thutmose III had the name of the only woman pharaoh in history to be erased from the walls of the temple and her likenesses to be altered so as to represent himself. He has also built another temple close by to divert there the processions of Amun.Both temples were destroyed by earthquake and covered with rocks and rubbish fallen from the cliff. The clearing and restoration was started a century ago. After three millennia and a half of supression and devastation, Hatshepsut comes back into her own.Read More