szafa artyk:Layout 1 · Council of Antiquities (former EAO), the two ramps leading to the Middle and Upper Terrace respectively were restored. At the foot of the upper ramp, statues

Zbigniew E. Szafrański

DEIR EL-BAHARITEMPLE OF HATSHEPSUT

szafa artyk:Layout 1 2007-09-19 10:50 Page 91


Polish scholars and conservation spe-cialists, who were sent by KazimierzMichałowski to Deir el-Bahari in 1961,were the latest in a long series of travelersand researchers visiting the site. The first toleave a description of the abandoned Copticmonastery that had once stood on top of theruins of the temple of Hatshepsut was the fa-mous English explorer Richard Pococke whostopped here in 1737. Jean-François Cham-pollion copied the texts from the temple’sgranite portals and the walls of the MainSanctuary of Amun-Re. John Gardner Wilkin-son introduced the name Deir el-Bahari(Northern Monastery) in world literature in1835. Richard Lepsius followed with theidentification of the ruins as a temple ofHatshepsut. Regular excavations werestarted by Auguste Mariette, the founderof the Egyptian Antiquities Service, afterwhich two institutions of great merit forEgyptological studies moved in. The firstwas a mission of the Egypt ExplorationFund (EEF) directed by Edouard Naville.Between 1893 and 1899 it managed toclear the Upper Terrace and most of theburied courtyards, chapels and colonnades.Roofs were installed over the Portico of theObelisks and the porticoes of the MiddleTerrace. The walls of the Main Sanctuary ofAmun-Re were reinforced and a provi-

sional protection was carried out of the SunAltar, Royal Cult complex, Hathor Chapeland Lower Northern Portico. Ten yearslater Herbert E. Winlock arrived in Deir el-Bahari at the head of a mission of the Met-ropolitan Museum of Art which stayedthere for the next twenty years (1911-1931), penetrating the terraces and thetwo ramps of the uncovered temple.

When Leszek Dąbrowski came withhis group of specialists from Warsaw Univer-sity’s Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology(PCMA), they found row upon row of dec-orated blocks arranged by their illustriouspredecessors, waiting to be restored to theiroriginal positions in the walls, columns andarchitraves of the temple. The Poles hadbeen invited to take over the project by theEgyptian Antiquities Organization. KazimierzMichałowski remained at the head of thismission from its inception in the autumnof 1961 to his death in 1981.

Thus it is that the unique architecturalundertaking of an exceptional pharaoh-queen of the Eighteenth Dynasty, daughterof the great Tuthmosis I, sister and wife ofTuthmosis II, who ruled the land on the Nilesome 3500 years ago, has been the objectof investigations for almost two centuries.The terrace temple of Hatshepsut, enteredon UNESCO’s list of world cultural heritage,

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Deir el-Bahari. Temple of Hatshepsut


has its unquestioned place in textbooksdealing with the history of world architec-ture.

Reading the message that theQueen had recorded on the walls of thebuilding erected in the Third Terrace becamethe most important task of the Polish-Egypt-ian Archaeological and Conservation Mis-sion. The decoration of the temple hadchanged during its existence. The origins ofthe building, its initial form from the timesof Hatshepsut’s husband or perhaps father,are practically unknown and the queenherself introduced changes repeatedly inthe course of the project. After ruling for21 years, Hatshepsut disappeared from thepages of history. Another 20 years later,her successor Tuthmosis III had her namesand many of her representations erasedfrom the walls of the building. At the orderof Akhenaton, who introduced the cult ofAton, the names and images of Amun weredestroyed. The following rulers, especiallyHoremheb and Ramesses II, reconstructedthe earlier images and hieroglyphs, restoringAmun to the throne.

The stupendous work of document-ing the remains of the Upper Terrace and thethousands of blocks lying in the stores wasaccomplished by the mission. The decorationand the texts were traced in 1:1 scale ontransparent plastic film. The drawings werethen reduced in size and photographed;today this stage is beign processed digitally.The photos were made all in the same scaleso that researchers could fit this enormousjigsaw puzzle together, resulting in a theoret-ical reconstruction of the representations. Inthe course of this work, scholars took noteof all the recuttings, damages and restora-tions. Frequently enough daylight was insuf-ficient to observe the changes. Sometimes

it was best to do the tracings at night, thestrong side halogen lighting bringing outall the minor lines, dashes, hieroglyphtraces, changes in the surface texture of thewall or block. It was a titanic undertaking.The decoration of most of the walls of theUpper Terrace was thus cast in hundreds ofsquare meters of plastic film, tracing paperand ordinary paper.

Protection and reconstruction of par-ticular architectural elements of the buildingwere undertaken even while the studies ofthe decoration continued. The reconstructionenvisaged at the time by the Egyptian An-tiquities Organization (EAO) was an under-taking on an enormous scale. In 1968, ateam from the Polish Ateliers for the Preser-vation of Cultural Property (PKZ) wasbrought in; working for the next two decadesunder the direction of Zygmunt Wysocki, itpushed the work forward in new directions.It was decided in consultation with the EAOto reconstruct fully certain parts of the tem-ple. Thus, the Upper Portico and the walls ofthe Upper Terrace were restored to their fullheight. Some of the destroyed architecturalmembers, like column drums, architraveblocks, fragments of cornices and balustradeswere reconstructed of limestone quarriedimmediately next to the ancient Pharaonicquarries located north of West Thebes. Up to200 workers were employed at times onthis huge reconstruction project.

At the foot of the rock cliff risingvertically above the temple, the Queen’sarchitects had constructed a platform de-signed to protect the building from rockswalls. The reconstruction of this platform, afourth terrace of sorts, was the mission’sfirst observable achievement. The spaceabove the Bark Hall of the Main Sanctuarywas also protected along with the relieving

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stone slabs above the ceiling. The plainwall above the Upper Terrace was restored,forming a strong solar accent in a templethat was dedicated to the Sun God after all.As it was in the times of Hatshepsut, sotoday, this surface reflects like a mirror thefirst rays of the rising sun.

The Upper Terrace of the templewas the most important element of the entirebuilding. Here Hatshepsut incorporated themost important information concerning therole that the temple was intended to play inthe religious life of Egypt, information aboutthe times of her reign and even about herbold plans for the future. Fragments of thishuge jigsaw puzzle of stone blocks wereput back together into scenes, permittingto be deciphered many of the Queen’smessages.

The Upper Portico contains texts andimages illustrating Hatshepsut’s coronationas king of Egypt. The idea content here isa continuation and crowning of the narra-tion presented in the lower two terraces,where the queen boasted raising to Amun-Rein his temple at Karnak four of the greatestobelisks of the world (in her times) andorganizing a great expedition to the Landof Punt. She also made it clear that she wasthe daughter of Amun-Re, because Amun’sintercourse with her mother Ahmes resultedin the birth of the boy Hatshepsut – as tothis the scenes in the Portico of the Birthleave no doubt. The coronation was pre-ceded by a long text, inscribed in 110columns, reporting a series of miraculousevents that occurred by the will of Amun andled to the crown of the king of Upper andLower Egypt being placed on Hatshepsut’sbrow.

The most impressive element ofthe Coronation Portico are the 26 colossal

statues of Hatshepsut as Osiris standingagainst the pillars of the facade. Tuthmosis IIIhad the names of the Queen and the uraeiabove the foreheads of the statues, ham-mered out. Without this traditional royalattribute the statues represented solelyOsiris. So far, eight of these statues havebeen restored out of surviving fragments.The conservators’ efforts have made manyof the destroyed names of the Queen deci-pherable again. Two fragments of uraeifound during excavations were returned totheir place on the forehead of the statues.Centuries after they had been mutilated,these statues now represent Hatshepsutonce again.

In cooperation with the SupremeCouncil of Antiquities (former EAO), the tworamps leading to the Middle and UpperTerrace respectively were restored. At thefoot of the upper ramp, statues of two royalfalcons sitting on the backs of huge cobraswere reconstructed. The writhing bodies ofthe serpents topped the ramp’s balustrade.

The reconstructed walls of the UpperCourtyard, recording scenes from 3500 yearsago, have brought much new data on thecolorful feasts that were celebrated here. Thecourtyard was known as the Festival Court-yard. The Queen is present in all of theepisodes of the feasts. The scenes recon-structed to the right of the granite portal ofthe Courtyard, in the bottom registers ofthe east and north walls, roll like still shotsfrom a movie telling the story of the Beau-tiful Feast of the Valley during which Amun-Re left his sanctuary in Karnak to cross theNile and visit the temple of Hatshepsut onthe western bank. The colorful and evidentlymusic and singing procession proceeds to-ward the temple. The upper registers ofthese walls depict the procession leaving



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the temple and returning to Karnak. Manyof these scenes are simply unparalleled.The southern part of the east wall, to the leftof the portal, represents the Beautiful Feastof Opet during which the statue of Amun-Rein a bark was carried out in procession fromhis temple in Karnak to the sanctuary inLuxor, stopping at several chapels alongthe way. The procession then sailed downthe Nile to Karnak.

The restored west wall of the Court-yard appears as the monumental facade ofthe Main Sanctuary of Amun-Re. A set ofeighteen niches divided by a monumentalgranite portal in the middle, was used forthe worship of Hatshepsut. Osiriac statuesof the Queen stood in ten of the largerniches; four of the statues were restored bythe mission.

Scenes of the Daily Ritual appear onthe south wall of the Courtyard. Here, Hat-shepsut is shown, sometimes with Tuthmo-sis III and sometimes with her daughterNeferure and her mother Ahmes, perform-ing the priestly rituals with regard to thestatue of Amun-Re.

The reconstruction of the walls ofthe Festival Courtyard to their full heightidentified the position of sockets in the ar-chitrave, leading in effect to a determina-tion of the number and arrangement of thecolumns. Initially, the courtyard had tworows of columns on all four sides. On theeast, that is, the side of the entrance, Hat-shepsut had a third row of columns installed.At the same time she cut an entrance in thesouth wall, providing access to a complexof two mortuary cult chapels, which musthave been erected by then. One was in-tended for her father Tuthmosis I and theother for herself. The cutting of this door-way necessitated the columns in the rows

by the wall separating the courtyard fromthe chapels to be moved apart, thus elim-inating one column per row. Thus, the thirdrow of columns emphasized the second,transversal axis of the temple on the UpperTerrace. The reconstruction has restoredthis arrangement, emphasizing with theaxis from the Courtyard to the Chapel ofHatshepsut, which was the most importantplace of her worship. The architrave restingon the capitals marks the importance ofboth the axis and the passage, recreatingthe Queen’s message which was to underlinethe exceptional importance of her cult,practically equaling that of Amun-Re.

The Main Sanctuary was a challengein all respects: conservation, Egyptologicalstudies and reconstruction. And Polish re-storers rose to the challenge, restoring thesanctuary to its former magnificence. TheBark Hall is the first room of the sanctuary. Itis here that Amon’s sacred bark stood withthe huge piles of offerings placed before it.Conservators removed from the paintedwalls layers upon layers of dirt and sootaccumulated through the ages. The mag-nificent polychrome reliefs depict in detailthe ceremonies celebrated in this chamber.The colors, clean and fresh again, highlightthe artistry of the carvings, particularly thefinesse of the sculptor who rendered all theexquisite details of Amun’s bark, the offer-ings, faces of the main characters in thisstory, hieroglyphic signs, birds, plants andmany others. The lost fragments have beendone as white artificial stone surfaces, butin order not to deter from understandingthe full meaning of particular scenes, themissing elements were recreated. In a fewof the scenes, the lost parts were carveddelicately. Similarly sparing reconstructionswere rendered also in some of the repre-



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sentations of the walls of the Upper Court-yard. In the longer walls of the Bark Hallthere are six niches and in the corners of theroom there once stood four mummiformstatues of Hatshepsut; two of these havebeen reconstructed and restored to theiroriginal position. The main thrust of theconservation work on the sanctuary datesto the time of the mission working underthe direction of Franciszek Pawlicki from1992 to 1999.

A short ramp with steps down themiddle, also reconstructed by the mission,led to the second chapel of the sanctuary, theHall of the Offering Table which togetherwith the smaller lateral chapels and a greatniche in the west wall is also the last part ofthe Holy of Holies. The niche in the west wallof this chapel was reconstructed in the latestseason (2006/2007) and it has brought ineffect a most important discovery changingour understanding of the layout of theoriginal sanctuary. Instead of three chapelshitherto considered as the constituent partsof the Main Sanctuary, it is now clear thatthere were only two chambers ending in alarge niche located on the main axis of thetemple and closed with wooden doors. In-side the niche, on a pedestal, there stood anebony naos and in it a statue. The thirdchamber was cut thirteen hundred yearslater, during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euer-getes II. The western niche was eliminated,the niches in the Bark Hall were blockedand a portico was added in the UpperCourtyard, immediately in front of thegranite portal leading inside the MainSanctuary. The chapel was dedicated toImhotep and Amenhotep son of Hapu,worshipped sages and great builders of theThird and Eighteenth Dynasties respectively.The efforts of the conservators also brought

to light the gilded reliefs of the Ptolemaicchapel. In this later period, the entire com-plex served as a religious faith-healing cen-ter where the needy sougth help from thegods.

In restoring the Ptolemaic Porticoa conscious effort was made to impart onthe structure the appearance of a buildingadded in the times of Hatshepsut. Thejoints between the stone blocks of thePortico were even widered artificially inorder to heighten the effect of loose ele-ments adjoining an older facade. The por-tico partly concealed the lower parts of thefigures of Queen Ahmes represented in twovery important scenes carved in symmetryon either side of the portal. The queen wasshown standing behind the throne ofAmun-Re, immediately next to the granitejambs. The scene was reworked a numberof times already in Antiquity, the originalfigure being Neferure instead of Ahmes.The four blocks of the portico which hadobstructed from view the original facadefrom Hatshepsut’s time were dismantledand what was discovered revealed yetanother of the Queen’s mysteries. Nefer-ure appeared in full light as a potentialruler of Egypt. Depicted as a priestess ofHathor, with her name inscribed in a royalcartouche, she greeted on the threshold ofthe Main Sanctuary two arriving importantfigures, in all likelihood Hathor and KingHatshepsut. These two scenes announcedthe will of the great Queen that her daugh-ter Neferure would rule Egypt after her.This was not the case for Neferure disap-pears after the eleventh year of Hatshep-sut’s reign, and ten years later so does hermother.

On either side of the Festival Court-yard there are two big complexes of build-



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ings: to the south the said Mortuary CultChapels and to the north the Solar CultComplex. In the vestibule of the lattercomplex, three out of four walls werereconstructed to their full height. Thisvestibule was dedicated to the sun’sjourney across the night sky. Hatshepsut isshown here as a priestess of the Sun God,versed in the knowledge of the sun’s trans-formations during the night hours, as setdown in the so-called Theological Treatise,a poem written down on the walls of thevestibule. This room was once roofed andcompletely dark. From here an entranceled to the sun-flooded courtyard with a stonesun altar in the center. The undecoratedwalls of the courtyard concentrated sun-light, creating a mood for worshipping theday sun that restorers were able to evokeby using white limestone. Many of the lostelements of the altar’s architecture wererestored in new limestone.

The partly rock-cut Upper Chapel ofAnubis was entered from a door in the northwall. The decoration of this chapel, pre-served by the mission, is an artistic mas-terpiece of the age. The entire chapel hasbeen isolated from its surroundings, sealedas if in a cage to protect it from the detri-mental effects of climate and potential dis-location of the rock massif behind it. Thechapel was yet another place of Hatshep-sut’s cult. Very subtly, the Queen identifiedherself here with Imy-wt, one of the aspectsof the god Anubis.

The Mortuary Cult Complex locatedon the other side of the Festival Courtyard isthe current focus of the mission’s work di-rected by Zbigniew E. Szafrański since1999. As already mentioned above, thecomplex incorporated chapels of Hatshep-sut and her father. The chapel of Hatshep-

sut, which is the biggest interior in thewhole temple, gives the impression of theinside of an Old Kingdom mastaba. TheQueen had scenes from the walls of a tem-ple of Pepi II from the Sixth Dynasty trans-ferred to her chapel. Inscribed on thesemicircular vault is the Ritual of Night andDay Hours. More than a third of this vaulthas survived in place; the rest, pieced to-gether from fragments, is stored and awaitsreconstruction.

The mission has extended its workalso to the Middle Terrace. The decoration ofthe portico of the Lower Chapel of Anubiswas cleaned and conserved, as was thedecoration in the southern wing of the Por-tico of Punt. For a time (1989-1992) an epi-graphic mission directed by Janusz Karkowskiworked in the temple. From 1971 Karkow-ski coordinated the Egyptological studiescarried out in the temple and in 1992 hebecame co-director with Nathalie Beaux-Grimal of a Polish-French Epigraphic Mission,established on the grounds of an agreementsigned between the Polish Centre and the In-stitut français d’archéologie orientale. Thismission is charged with preparing a mono-graphic publication of the Hathor Chapel.

Excavations, which are another aspectof the Polish-Egyptian Mission’s program,are planned to bring answers to questionsconnected with the history of the buildingand the need to check the stability of wallfoundations. Any endangered areas thatare identified are protected immediatelywith appropriate supporting structures. Ex-cavations also bring to light new blocks thatcan be fitted into the reconstructed walls.

The temple was destroyed by a quakeand the ruins were subsequently used as aburial ground in the Third Intermediate Pe-riod. The shaft tombs hewn into the rocky



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floor of the temple’s chapels held the re-mains of high priests of the temples ofAmun and Montu in Karnak and membersof the royal family in the times of theTwenty-third and Twenty-fifth Dynasties.So far 15 burial shafts have been discovered.All were plundered already in Antiquity,but based on surviving elements of thetomb equipment, it was determined thatthe vizier Padiamonet was buried in theChapel of Hatshepsut during the reign ofPiye of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty.

The disturbed and mixed fill of theshafts has also yielded elements of the fur-nishings from the Coptic church that onceoccupied the Chapel of Hatshepsut. Scrapsof papyrus, ostraca, sherds of pottery andpilgrim’s flasks speak of the life of the monkswho lived in the ruins of the temple. Visitorsin Roman times also tended to lose an oddcoin on occasion, thus informing us of theirpresence in the temple in the 4th century,before the construction of the monastery.

On 3 April 2000, the closing day ofthe Eight International Congress of Egyptolo-

gists, which was held in Cairo, the restora-tion work was finished on the Festival Court-yard, the Coronation Portico and the MainSanctuary of Amun-Re. The most importantpart of the Upper Terrace was opened toEgyptologists and tourists from around theworld.

The reconstruction respects historicaltruth and it reflects the main internationallegal acts in this respect, as much as compre-hensive restoration conceptions and aesthetictrends current in the field of restorationtoday. In the end effect, the mission has beenable to discover and save different phases inthe functioning of the temple throughout themore than 2600 years of its existence.

The Queen was once sentenced tooblivion. Her successors wanted nothingmore than to obliterate her memory andremove her name from the annals of thehistory of Egyptian pharaohs. They havebeen foiled in this attempt thanks to theefforts of the Queen’s modern courtiersfrom the Polish-Egyptian Archaeologicaland Conservation Mission.



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Select bibliographyE. NAVILLE, The Temple of Deir el-Bahari, London 1895-1908, vols: I (EEF 13) 1895; II (EEF 14)1896; III (EEF 16) 1898; IV (EEF 19) 1901; V (EEF 27) 1906; VI (EEF 29) 1908H.E. WINLOCK, Excavations at Deir el-Bahari 1911-1931, New York 1942E. LASKOWSKA-KUSZTAL, Le sanctuaire ptolémaïque de Deir el-Bahari, Deir el-Bahari III, Varsovie1984W. GODLEWSKI, Le monastère de St Phoibammon, Deir el-Bahari V, Varsovie 1986Z. WYSOCKI, The temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Its original form, MDAIK 42,1986, pp. 213-228, pls. 30-31F. PAWLICKI, The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, Cairo 2000Z.E. SZAFRAŃSKI (ed.), Queen Hatshepsut and her temple 3500 years later, Warsaw 2001J. KARKOWSKI, The Temple of Hatshepsut. The Solar Complex, Deir el-Bahari VI, Warsaw 2003M. BARWIK, New data concerning the Third Intermediate Period cemetery in the Hatshepsuttemple at Deir el-Bahari, in: N. STRUDWICK and J.H. TAYLOR (eds), The Theban Necropolis,London 2003, pp. 122-130, pls 76-90A. ŁAJTAR, Deir el-Bahari in Hellenistic and Roman Periods, JJP Supplement 3, Warsaw 2006


Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace View from the northeast, after reconstruction

(Photo M. Jawornicki)

Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Beginning of work on the temple in the early 1960s (in the background, excavations of the temple of Tuthmosis III) (PCMA Archives)


Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Portrait of Hatshepsut from the Main Sanctuary of Amun-ReFace and body of the queen painted pink (Photo M. Jawornicki)

Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Portrait ofTuthmosis III from the Main Sanctuary of Amun-Re



Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Portrait of Neferure, daughter of Hatshepsut. The headdress was changed to one typical of the queen’s images when Hatshepsut changed the daughter’s name to that of her mother Ahmes. Scene (left, southern) at the entrance to the Main Sanctuary of Amun-Re (Photo M. Jawornicki)

Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Main Sanctuary of Amun-Re, Bark Hall. After

reconstruction (2000). In the background, Hall of the Offering Table and Ptolemaic Sanctuary



Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Festival Courtyard after restoration. Two restored architraves mark the two axes of the temple (Photo M. Jawornicki)

Temple of Hatshepsut. Upper Terrace. Solar Cult Complex after restoration



Documents

szafa artyk:Layout 1 · Council of Antiquities (former EAO), the two ramps leading to the Middle and Upper Terrace respectively were restored. At the foot of the upper ramp, statues