To recap– we visited the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Nobles, Alabaster Factory, Medinet Habu, and Hatshepsut’s Temple (the subject of this post) all in a single day long day of touring. In retrospect, I would have found a hotel on the West Bank of Luxor instead, and spent two full days on the West Bank and one full day on the East Bank. Despite our somewhat insane itinerary, I did feel like we got to spend just about enough time at each site but at times we felt a little rushed by our guide, who no doubt was worried that we wouldn’t finish in time.
Our second stop (but the last blog) is about Djeser-Djeru (“Holy of Holies”), which is the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, who was a pharaoh and lived until 1458 BC. She was a woman! She stole the throne from her two-year-old stepson, but since it wasn’t too easy to assert your rule over an empire when you were born with two X chromosomes, Hatshepsut often had herself described using male pronouns and was otherwise depicted with male features in art. For example, as we had seen in the Egyptian Museum, reliefs of her were painted in the darker-brown color usually reserved for men.
There’s no denying the woman had good taste. Her temple is nestled underneath some impressive geology, which makes the whole place feel like a natural cathedral. It was very evocative scenery that reminds me a little bit of the mountains surrounding Machu Picchu…the place just feels holy, with or without ruins!
The eyes of Horus are watching you:
After a reign of about 21 years, Hatshepsut’s stepson Thutmose III took over and was pretty pissed about his stepmother’s overreach. He set to work attempting to erase all pharaonic records and memory of her, and also unleashed his wrath on her temple. However, both here at her temple and with her obelisk at Karnak Temple, it was considered poor form to deface anything depicting the gods– so he couldn’t erase her totally. In the below case, you can see Hatshepsut suckling from the Goddess Hathor (who takes the form of a cow). Thutmose didn’t dare deface the carvings of Hathor, so he had himself chiseled into the scene leading Hathor, thereby one-upping the “evil” Stepmother.
Hathor also appears in a half-human form at the tops of these pillars—absolutely gorgeous!
The temple underwent extensive restoration in the 1980s and 1990s, courtesy of a Polish team.
Below, an offering to the god Amun-Ra (who is super easy to identify, because he has the very distinct two-feather-hat). All of the delicious food and drink and other offerings are on the left of the photo:
Triumphal arch equivalents? I tried to look up what these things are called but haven’t been able to find a good website that breaks down the various features of Ancient Egyptian architecture.
