It is built at the base of the rugged Theban cliffs, and commands the plain in magnificent fashion; its white colonnades rising, terrace above terrace, until it is backed by the golden living rock. The ivory white walls of courts, side chambers and colonnades, have polished surfaces which give an alabaster-like effect. They are carved with a fine art, figures and hieroglyphs being filled in with rich yellow colour, the glow of which against the white gives an effect of warmth and beauty quite indescribable.15
Few who have enjoyed the privilege of visiting Deir el-Bahri would argue with this assessment, and today Djeser-Djeseru remains beyond doubt one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. It certainly occupies a unique place in the history of Egyptian architecture, and indeed the columned porticoes which provide a striking contrast of light and shade across the front of the building appear to many modern eyes more Greek than Egyptian in style, provoking anachronistic but flattering comparisons with classical temple architecture in its most pure form. Only Winlock, the long-term excavator of Djeser-Djeseru, has gone on record as expressing his doubts about the magnificence of the edifice, and even he reserves his criticism for its construction rather than its design:
Unquestionably, when it was completed the building was far more imposing than its eleventh dynasty model, and its plan had been adapted to fit its magnificent surroundings in a wholly masterful way. But whenever we have had occasion to examine its shoddy, jerry-built foundations, we have had an unpleasant feeling of sham behind all this impressiveness which up to that time had not been especially characteristic of Egyptian architects. Possibly Senenmut was a victim of necessity and speed was required of him – or perhaps there is some more venal explanation.16
The architect of this masterpiece is generally assumed to be Hatchepsut's favourite Senenmut, who numbers amongst his titles ‘Controller of Works in Djeser-Djeseru’. However Senenmut never specifically claims the title of architect, a strange omission for one not normally shy of listing his own accomplishments, and it seems that the Chief Treasurer Djehuty, who ‘… acted as chief, giving directions, I led the craftsman to work in the works of Djeser-Djeseru’, may well have played a major part in its development. Other high-ranking courtiers, including the Vizier (unnamed, but almost certainly Hapuseneb who is credited with the building of Hatchepsut's tomb) and the Second Prophet of Amen, Puyemre, also had some involvement in its construction; all of these officials are known to have been the recipients of so-called ‘name stones’, building blocks donated to the construction project by the ordinary citizens of Thebes. These roughly cut stones, recovered from the foundations of the Valley temple, all bear the cartouche of Maatkare plus an additional hieratic inscription detailing the date that they were sent to the building site, the name of the sender and the name of the recipient. Further bricks recovered from the Valley temple are stamped with the cartouches of Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis I, which appear side by side.
The name of Tuthmosis I is also to be found amongst the engraved scarabs which formed a part of the temple foundation deposits. These deposits – offerings intended to preserve the name of the builder and to ensure good luck in the founding of the temple – were buried with ceremony in small mud-brick-lined pits at every important point around the boundaries of the temple and its grounds.17 They included a mixture of amulets, scarabs, foods, perfumes and miniature models of the tools which would be used in the building of the temple. The inscriptions all make it clear that Hatchepsut alone was to be regarded as the temple's founder:18
She made it as a monument to her father Amen on the occasion of stretching the cord over Djeser Djeseru, [the ritual laying out of the temple ground-plan] may she live forever, like Re!
Hatchepsut intended her new temple to house both her own mortuary chapel and, on a slightly smaller scale, that of her father, Tuthmosis I. The mortuary chapel in its most simple form, as provided for a private individual, was the place where the living could go to make the offerings of food, drink and incense which would sustain the Ka or soul of the deceased in the Afterlife. The cult-statue, a representation of the dead person which stood within the chapel, became the focus for these daily offerings as it was understood that the soul could actually take up residence within the statue. A royal mortuary chapel, however, was not simply a cafeteria for the deceased. The divine king, once dead, could become associated with a number of important deities, particularly Osiris and Re, both of whom represented a potential Afterlife; the king could choose whether to spend eternity sailing daily across the sky in the solar boat with Re, or relaxing in the Field of Reeds with Osiris. The royal mortuary chapels reflected these associations, providing a dark and gloomy shrine for the worship of Osiris and a light open-air court for the worship of Re. During the New Kingdom they also reflected the growing power of Amen. Amen now started to play a prominent role in the scenes which decorate the walls, and his shrine now formed the focus of the mortuary chapel.
All these elements were to be found at Djeser-Djeseru, which was designed as a multi-functional temple with a complex of shrines devoted to the worship of various deities. In addition to the mortuary temples of Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis I, there were twin chapels dedicated to the local goddess Hathor and to Anubis, smaller shrines consecrated to the memory of Hatchepsut's ancestors, and even a solar temple, its roof open to the cloudless Theban sky, dedicated to the worship of the sun god Re-Harakte. The main shrine was, however, devoted to the cult of Amen Holiest of the Holy, a variant of Amen with whom Hatchepsut would become one after death. It was as the focus of the Amen-based ‘Feast of the Valley’, an annual festival of death and renewal, that Djeser-Djeseru played an important part in Theban religious life.
The Feast of the Valley was celebrated at new moon during the second month of Shemu or summer. Amen normally dwelt in splendid isolation in the sanctuary of his own great temple at the heart of the Karnak complex. Here he spent the days and nights in his dark and lonely shrine, visited only by the priests responsible for performing the rituals of washing and dressing the cult-statue, and by those who tempted him daily with copious offerings of meat, bread, wine and beer. However, on the appointed day he would abandon the gloom of his torchlit home and, accompanied by the statues of Mut and Khonsu, would cross the river to spend the night with Hathor at Djeser-Djeseru.
With an escort of priests, musicians, incense-bearers, dancers and acrobats and doubtless an excited crowd of Thebans, and with his own golden barque carried high on the shoulders of his servants, Amen made his way in the bright sunlight along the processional avenue to the canal. Here he embarked on his barge, sailed in state across the Nile and navigated his way through the network of canals which linked the mortuary temples of the West Bank. He disembarked at the small Valley Temple situated on the desert edge (now entirely destroyed) and, after the performance of a religious rite, proceeded along the gently sloping causeway which, aligned exactly on Karnak, was lined with pairs of painted sphinxes. Along the route there was a small barque shrine where his bearers could pause if necessary before passing into the precincts of the temple proper. That same evening many Theban families would set off in procession for the West Bank where they too were to spend the night, not in a temple, but in the private tomb-chapels of their relations and ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their reunion with the dead. After the climax of the Feast, a religious rite performed at sunrise, Amen sailed back to his temple, and the bleary-eyed townsfolk returned home to bed.
The Djeser-Djeseru was surrounded by a thick limestone enclosure wall. Once through the gate, Amen passed immediately into a peaceful, pleasantly shaded garden area where T-shaped pools glinted in the sunlight and trees – almost certainly the famous fragrant trees from Punt – offered a tempting respite from the fierce desert sun. Looking upwards, Amen would have seen the temple in all its glory; a softly gleaming white limestone building occupying three ascending terraces set back against the cliff, its tiered porti
coes linked by a long, open-air stairway rising through the centre of the temple towards the sanctuary. Amen's route lay upwards. Passing over the lower portico he reached the flat second terrace where his path was marked out by pairs of colossal, painted red-granite sphinxes, each with Hatchepsut's head, inscribed to ‘The King of Upper and Lower Egypt Maatkare, Beloved of Amen who is in the midst of Djeser-Djeseru, and given life forever’.
The second imposing stairway continued upwards so that Amen entered the body of the temple on its upper and most important level. Amen passed from the bright desert light to the cool shade and, making his way between the imposing pairs of kneeling colossal statues which lined the path to the sanctuary, he reached his journey's end; the haven of his own dark shrine cut deep into the living rock of the Theban mountain. Here the secret, sacred rites would be performed by torchlight, and magnificent offerings would first be presented to the god and then shared out between his priests.
It is possible that Hathor too only spent a limited amount of time at Djeser-Djeseru. A much-damaged scene on the northern wall of the outermost room of the shrine depicts the arrival of the barque of Amen at the Valley temple. Hathor's barque is also shown, as indeed are three empty royal barges which seem to belong to the two kings Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III and to their ‘queen’, the Princess Neferure. These three have presumably left their boats to join the festivities. The accompanying text suggests Hathor's visitor status:
Shouting by the crews of the royal boats, the youths of Thebes, the fair lads of the army of the entire land, of praises in greeting this god, Amen, Lord of Karnak, in his procession of the ‘Head of the Year’… at the time of causing this great goddess [Hathor] to proceed to rest in her temple in Djeser-Djeseru-Amen so that they [Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III] might achieve life forever.19
Hathor, ‘Lady of the Sycamores’, ‘Mistress of Music’ and patron of love, motherhood, and drunkenness, could take several forms. She could appear as the nurturing cow-goddess who suckled amongst others the
Fig. 6.4 Hatchepsut being suckled by the goddess Hathor in the form of a cow
infant Hatchepsut, as the serpent goddess, the ‘living uraeus of Re’ who symbolized Egyptian kingship, as a beautiful young woman or as a bloodthirsty lion-headed avenger. She could even, in her more sinister role as the ‘Seven Hathors’, become a goddess of death. Hatchepsut seems to have felt a particular devotion for Hathor, a devotion which may well have stemmed from her period as queen-consort. Throughout the dynastic period successive queens of Egypt were each closely identified with Hathor, and indeed during the Old Kingdom several queens had left the seclusion of the harem to serve as priestesses in her temple. This tradition had faded somewhat during the Middle Kingdom, but the strong queens of the late 17th and early 18 th Dynasties had revived it, becoming firmly associated with the goddess in her dual role as divine consort and mother of a king. Our best-known example of a queen associated with Hathor comes from the smaller temple at Abu Simbel, Southern Egypt, whose colossal statues of Queen Nefertari, wife of Ramesses II, show her represented as the goddess. Contemporary depictions of Hathor show her wearing the customary queen's regalia so that the link between the queen and the goddess is made obvious to all.
Hatchepsut dedicated a number of shrines to Hathor in her various manifestations; these often took the form of a rock-cut sanctuary fronted by a colonnade or vestibule. The Speos Artemidos with its unfinished Hathor-headed pillars may be included amongst these, as Pakhet was a local version of Hathor's fierce lion-headed form. It is therefore not too surprising that Hatchepsut's mortuary temple, established on the site of a traditional shrine and home to a chapel dedicated to Hathor, includes many representations of this goddess. Here she is not only shown as a cow feeding the baby Hatchepsut, she plays an important role during Hatchepsut's birth and she even, in her role as ‘Mistress of Punt’, manages to gain a mention in the tale of Hatchepsut's epic mission. This link between Hatchepsut and a powerful, female-orientated mother-goddess is highly significant, suggesting as it does that Hatchepsut principally known for her association with the male god Amen may not have been averse to having her name linked with a predominantly feminine cult.20
Fig. 6.5 Hathor in her anthropoid form
Almost all New Kingdom cult temples were decorated with scenes intended to demonstrate the good relationship which existed between the king and his gods. The outer, more public parts of the temples (the pylon and courtyard) usually depicted the pharaoh in his most obvious role, that of the warrior-king defending his land against the traditional enemies of Egypt, while the inner, more private areas showed more intimate scenes: here the king could be seen acting as high priest, or making an offering before the cult statue. Djeser-Djeseru cannot be classed as a typical New Kingdom temple. Not only did the building have an unprecedented three-tiered design, its owner also had her own unique propaganda message which she was determined to put across via the walls of her temple. Nevertheless, and bearing these two important differences in mind, the scenes found on the two lower porticoes do seem to contain the same mixture of public and more private scenes that we might expect to find at a more conventional temple site.21
The two broad stairways connecting the terraces effectively cut the temple in two, so that the two lower porticoes which front the temple are divided into four distinct sections. Here we find scenes depicting significant events from Hatchepsut's life and reign, all chosen to emphasize her filial devotion to Amen. Along the bottom south (or left hand as we face the temple) portico we see scenes of the refurbishment of the Great Temple of Amen at Karnak, including the erection of the famous obelisks, while on the opposite side of the same portico, which is now unfortunately much destroyed, we are shown Hatchepsut in her role as the traditional 18th Dynasty huntin’, shootin' and fishin' pharaoh; she takes the form of an awesome sphinx to trample the enemies of Egypt, and appears as a king fowling and fishing in the marshes. The middle portico tells the tale of Hatchepsut's divine birth and coronation (northern side) and the story of the expedition to Punt (southern side). At each end of this portico is a chapel, the northern chapel being dedicated to Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, and the southern chapel, possibly the site of her original Deir el-Bahri shrine, being dedicated to Hathor.
The uppermost level, the most important part of the temple, took the form of a hypostyle hall fronted by an Osiride portico with each of its twenty-four square-cut pillars faced by an imposing, twice life-sized, painted limestone Osiriform statue of Hatchepsut staring impassively outwards over the Nile Valley towards Karnak. These statues were matched by the ten Osiride statues which stood in the niches at the rear of the upper court, by the four Osiride statues in the corners of the sanctuary and by the enormous Osiride statues – each nearly 8 m (26 ft) tall – which stood at each end of the lower and middle porticoes. All these statues showed the king with a white mummiform body and crossed arms holding the emblems of Osiris, the ankh or life sign and the was-sceptre, symbol of dominion, combined with the traditional emblems of kingship, the crook and flail. Her bearded face was painted either red or pink, her eyes were white and black and her eyebrows a rather unnatural blue, while on her head Osiris/Hatchepsut wore either the White crown of Upper Egypt or the double crown.
On the southern side of the upper portico was the mortuary chapel of Hatchepsut, a rectangular vaulted chamber with an enormous false-door stela of red granite occupying almost the entire west wall. The cult-statue of Hatchepsut would have stood directly in front of this stela. Next door was the much smaller chapel allocated to the cult of Tuthmosis I; the west wall of his chamber has been demolished and his false-door stela is now housed in the Louvre Museum, Paris. It is possible that there was originally an even smaller chapel dedicated to the cult of Tuthmosis II, although all trace of this has now been lost. On the opposite side of the upper portico was an open-air solar temple with a raised altar of fine white limestone dedicated to the sun god Re-Harakhte. There was also a small chapel de
dicated to Anubis and to Hatchepsut's family; here her parents Tuthmosis I and Ahmose and her non-royal grandmother Senisenb all appear on the walls. The sanctuary itself, two dark, narrow interconnected rooms designed to hold the barque of Amen and the statue which represented the god himself, was carved with images of the celebration of the beautiful Feast of the Valley; Hatchepsut, Neferure, Tuthmosis I, Ahmose and Hatchepsut's dead sister Neferubity all appear on the walls to offer before the barque.
Hatchepsut's mortuary cult was abandoned soon after her death, and Djeser-Akhet took over as the site for the celebration of the Feast of the Valley. It is therefore highly likely that Senenu, High Priest of both Amen and Hathor at Djeser-Djeseru during Hatchepsut's lifetime, was both the first and last to hold this exalted post. However, the cult of Amen and, to a lesser extent, the cult of Hathor continued to be celebrated at Djeser-Djeseru until the end of the 20th Dynasty. By this time the Tuthmosis III temple Djeser-Akhet and the Mentuhotep II mortuary temple had been abandoned and both lay in ruins. The Hatchepsut temple, its upper level now badly damaged, continued to flourish as a focus for burials until, during the Ptolemaic period, it became the cult centre for the worship of two deified Egyptians, Imhotep the builder of the step-pyramid, and the 18th Dynasty sage and architect Amenhotep, son of Hapu. The Amen sanctuary was cleared of its rubble, extended and refurbished for their worship. The site then fell again into disuse until the fifth century BC when it was taken over by a Coptic monastery who also used the Amen sanctuary as a focus for their worship. The site was finally abandoned some time during the eighth century AD, apparently because rockslides had rendered the upper levels dangerous.
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