Hatshepsut Temple

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The Hatshepsut Temple (Temple of Deir El-Bahri) is one of the most characteristic temples in the whole of Egypt,

 due to its design and decorations. It was built of limestone, not sandstone like most of
the other funerary temples of the New Kingdom period.


The Hatshepsut Temple is built into the rock, and consists of three terraces. The temple
itself is located on the top terrace. Hatshepsut was born in the 18th Dynasty.

Hatshepsut is one of the more mysterious figures of ancient Egyptian history. The Temple
was built for the great Queen Hatshepsut (18th Dynasty), to commemorate her achievements
and to serve as a funerary temple for her, as well as a sanctuary of the God, Amon Ra.



The mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut is one of the most dramatically situated in the
 world. The queen's architect, Senenmut, designed it and set it at the head of a valley
overshadowed by the Peak of the Thebes, the "Lover of Silence," where lived the goddess
who presided over the necropolis.



Hatshepsut named her temple "Djeser Djeseru", a hieroglyphic expression meaning,
the Splendour of Splendours. Located on the western bank of the Nile (or in Western
Thebes, the great capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom), this is one of the most
beautiful of the royal mortuary temples.




The Temple consists of three imposing terraces. The two lower ones would have once been
full of trees. On the southern end of the 1st colonnade there are some scenes, among them
the famous scene of the transportation of Hatshepsut’s two obelisks.