Deir el-Bahri

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Djeser-Djeseru – the focal point of the complex

Deir el-Bahri (Arabic دير البحري dayr al-baḥrī, literally meaning, “The Northern Monastery”) is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt. The first monument built at the site was the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh dynasty. During the Eighteenth dynasty, Amenhotep I and Hatshepsut also built extensively at the site. On November 17, 1997 62 people were massacred by Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya at the site.

1 The mortuary temples
2 Royal and non-Royal tombs
3 See also
4 External links
5 References

The three temples at Deir el Bahri from the top of the cliff behind them. Hatshepsut's temple on left, Tuthmosis III's temple in center and Montuhotep I's temple on right.

Panoramic view of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

Behind this structure was an open court, then a hypo-style hall, and then the sanctuary and tomb of the Pharaoh himself. The shaft and subsequent tunnel descend for 150 meters and end in a burial chamber 45 meters below the court. The chamber held a shrine, which once held the wooden coffin of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep. A great tree-lined court was reached by means of the processional causeway, leading up from the valley temple. Beneath the court, a deep shaft was cut which led to unfinished rooms believed to have originally been intended as the king’s tomb. A wrapped image of the pharaoh was discovered in this area by Howard Carter. The temple complex also held six mortuary chapels and shaft tombs built for the pharaoh's wives and family.

The focal point of the Deir el-Bahri complex is the Djeser-Djeseru meaning "the Holy of Holies". It is a colonnaded structure, which was designed and implemented by Senemut, royal steward and architect of Hatshepsut (and commonly believed to be her consort), to serve for her posthumous worship and to honor the glory of Amun and the other gods. Djeser-Djeseru sits atop a series of colonnaded terraces, reached by long ramps, that once were graced with gardens and is built into a cliff face that rises sharply above it. It is 97 feet tall.

The unusual form of Hatshepsut's temple is explained by the choice of location, in the valley basin of Deir el-Bahri, surrounded by steep cliffs. It was here, in about 2050 BC, that Mentuhotep II, the founder of the Middle Kingdom, laid out his sloping, terrace-shaped mortuary temple. The pillared galleries at either side of the central ramp of the Djeser Djeseru correspond to the pillar positions on two successive levels of the Temple of Mentuhotep. From a functional point of view the individual parts of the Temple of Hatshepsut correspond to the classical form of Theban mortuary temples: pylon, courts, hypostyle hall, sun court, chapel for the royal cult, and sanctuary. As unusual as the architecture are the temes taken up in the temple reliefs. For the first time in Egyptian art, text and a pictorial cycle tell of the divine birth of the female pharaoh and also give a detailed account of an expedition to the Punt, a mysterious exotic country on the Red Sea coast.

Today the terrace of Deir el-Bahri only convey a faint impression of the original intentions of Senenmut. All the statue ornaments are missing - the statues of Osiris in front of the pillars of the upper colonnade, the sphinx avenues in front of the court, and the standing, sitting and kneeling figures of the queen; all were destroyed in a posthumous condemnation of the female pharaoh. The architecture of the temple has been considerably altered as a result of misguided reconstruction in the early twentieth century AD.

Thutmose III built a temple complex here, dedicated to Amun. Discovered in 1961, it is believed to have been used during the Feast of the Valley. Not much is known about the complex, as it was abandoned after sustaining severe damage during a land-slide in the latter 20th Dynasty. After that time it was used a source of building materials and in Christian times became the site of a Coptic cemetery.

An 11th Dynasty shaft tomb located at the southern end of the complex contained a cache of forty royal mummies, moved there from the Valley of the Kings. The bodies had been placed there by 21st Dynasty priests most likely to prevent further desecration and looting.

In the cache were found the mummies of Ahmose I, along with the 18th and 19th dynasty leaders Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Thutmose III, Ramesses I, Seti I, Ramesses II, and Ramesses IX. In a separate room were found 21st dynasty pharaohs Pinedjum I, Pinedjum II, and Siamun. Later on, a cache of 153 reburied mummies of the priests themselves were also found in a tomb at the site.

Private tombs dating from the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period can be found here. The two most notable private tombs at Deir el-Bahri are those of Meketra, which contain many painted wooden funerary models from the Middle Kingdom, and even the first recorded human-headed canopic jar, and the tomb of Senmut. Senmut's tomb was vandalized in antiquity, but some of the relief artwork is still intact. It was meant to be a very large tomb and the corridors are over 100 yards long; however, it was never finished and Senmut was not interred there. He has another tomb, not far from Deir el-Bahri, where his body may have been placed, but it, too, was vandalized and robbed.