Temple of Hatshepsut

The Temple of Hatshepsut was commissioned by Queen Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, around 1470 BCE. The brilliant architect Senenmut, who was also her royal steward, designed the structure. It was intended to serve as her mortuary temple and a monument to the god Amun.

The temple is located at Deir el-Bahari, a complex of mortuary temples on the west bank of the Nile River opposite Luxor. It is built directly into the towering limestone cliffs of the Theban Mountains. The natural backdrop creates a dramatic, perfectly symmetrical visual effect for the terraced structure.

Like other pharaohs, Hatshepsut built her mortuary temple to honor the gods, perform funerary rites, and legitimize her rule as a female pharaoh. It was filled with intricate reliefs depicting her divine birth and her famous trading expedition to the Land of Punt. By aligning it with the Temple of Amun at Karnak, she reinforced her status as a god's wife.

Following Hatshepsut's death, her successor and stepson, Thutmose III, initiated a campaign to systematically erase her memory. Her statues were violently smashed and thrown into a quarry near the temple. However, archaeologists in the 20th century recovered many of these fragments and successfully restored the statues to their original positions.