Hatshepsut's beautiful temple has always been, and still is, one of the
most deservedly famous of Egyptian temples . Since the discovery of the 11th
Dynasty building
( Mentuhotpe II and III ) beside it, it has become the fashion
to detract from the merit of the later building, and to suggest that all the
credit for the design ought to go to the 11th Dynasty architect, and
not to Senmût .
In point of fact, the solo idea which Senmût adopted from the 11th
Dynasty building was that of a terrace . The credit for his development of the
idea, which was entirely different from, and infinitely superior to, the 11th
Dynasty architect's extraordinary jumble of terrace and pyramid, is entirely
Senmût's own .
It is impossible to imagine that the earlier building can ever have been
a good composition, with its impertinent little 60-foot pyramid perking its
point up beneath the great cliffs of El-Deir El-Bahari . The credit for
appreciating what was good in a lost opportunity, and divining that only long
horizontal lines could live in presence of the overwhelming vertical lines of
the background, does not belong to the man who missed his chance, but to the
man who reared a building which every visitor to the place feels to be the only
possible solution of the problem presented by a most attractive, but also most
difficult, site .
The name El-Deir El-Bahari, which is applied to the site generally,
means " The Northern Monastery ", and refers, not to any of its
ancient associations, but to the Christian monastery which was erected on the
site of Queen Hatshepsut's temple, not to its advantage, about the seventh
century A.D . The ancient mass of the site was Zosret, " The Holy ",
and when Hatshepsut erected her temple beside that of the 11th
Dynasty Pharaohs she called it Zoser-Zosru ( Djeser-Djeseru ), " The Holy of Holies
" ; the two temples together being known as Zosreti, " The Two Holies
" .
The history of the great building may be briefly summarized . It was
begun by Queen Hatshepsut, and was intended to serve several purposes .
Primarily, it was " a Paradise for Amûn ", and was dedicated to him ;
but like many other temples in Egypt, it had accommodation for other gods as
well, and had also chapels sacred to Hathor and Anubis . But it was also
destined to serve as a mortuary temple for its founder, and for her parents .
Indeed, the original idea seems to have been that the
sarcophagus-chamber of her tomb in the Valley of The Kings should lie
immediately beneath the great temple, whose axis was arranged to be in line
with that of the tomb beyond the cliffs of El-Deir El-Bahari . Unfortunately,
however, the rock in the place which the Queen had chosen for her resting-place
turned out to be bad, so that it was not possible to carry out the intention of
burrowing beneath the cliffs till a position beneath the temple was reached ;
and the 700-foot corridor of the tomb had to be turned in a great curve away
from its projected objective .
Another object which the temple was destined to serve was that of
propaganda in favour of Hatshepsut's claim to the throne . The disagreements in
the royal family during the early stages of the 18th Dynasty are
sufficiently notorious, and the problem of the succession was sufficiently
involved, though it may be questioned if the tangle resulting from competing
claims were so complicated as is implied in some of the modern stories of the
history . It is sufficient for our purpose at the moment to notice that
Hatshepsut's claim was contested, and that the queen naturally took all
possible steps to secure her own position .
Of these, the most important, and the most likely to
succeed, was the creation of a theory of her divine origin, the divinity chosen
as her father being, of course, Amen-Rê, the patron-god of Thebes and of the
growing empire . The same idea, it will be remembered, was adopted at a later
date by Amenhotep ( Amenhotpe or Amenophis ) III, and was illustrated in his
reliefs at Luxor Temple . It was carried out here in much the same way .
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