Deir el-Bahari

About

Deir el-Bahari or Dayr al-Bahri (Arabic: الدير البحري‎, romanized: al-Dayr al-Baḥrī, literally «the northern monastery») is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs on the west bank of the Nile, outside the city of Luxor , Egypt. This is part of the Theban Necropolis. The first monument to be erected on the site was the 11th Dynasty mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II. It was created in the 21st century B.C. built. During the 18th Dynasty, Amenhotep I and Hatshepsut also built extensively on the site.

Mortuary temple of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep

From the eastern part of the Esplanade, an opening called Bab el-Hosan («Horsman’s Gate») leads to an underground passage and an unfinished tomb or cenotaph with a seated statue of the king. The inner part of the temple was actually carved out of the cliff and consists of a peristyle courtyard, a hypostyle hall and an underground passage leading to the tomb itself. The mastaba-like structure on the terrace is surrounded by a colonnade along the western wall where shrines and tombs of various royal wives and daughters have been found. The temple complex also housed six mortuary chapels and shaft tombs built for the pharaoh’s wives and daughters.

Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut

The focal point of the Deir el-Bahari complex is Djeser-Djeseru, meaning «Holy of Holies», Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple. It is a columnar structure designed and implemented by Senenmut, royal administrator and architect. by Hatshepsut (and believed by some to be her lover) to serve her posthumously and honor the glory of Amun. Djeser-Djeseru sits on a series of columned terraces accessed by long ramps that were once adorned with gardens. Today, the terraces of Deir el-Bahari give only a faint impression of Senenmut’s original intentions.

Mortuary Temple of Thutmose III

Thutmose III. built a temple complex here dedicated to Amun. It was discovered in 1961 and said to have been used during the Hermoso del Valle Festival. Not much is known about the complex as it was abandoned after severe damage. during a landslide in the late 20th Dynasty. Afterwards it served as a source of building material and in Christian times as a Coptic burial place.

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Architecture

Hatshepsut used a long terrace of columns that deviated from the centralized volume of Mentuhotep’s model, an anomaly that may reflect the decentralized location of their burial chamber. The temple contains an image shown at right, depicted as a man. Pharaoh making offerings to Horus and on his left an animal skin wrapped around a tall staff which is a symbol of the god Osiris. While the statues and ornaments were stolen or destroyed, the temple once housed two statues of Osiris. , a long avenue lined with sphinxes, as well as many sculptures of Pharaoh Hatshepsut in various poses: standing, sitting or kneeling.

Royal and non-royal tombs

A tomb (TT320) in a hidden hollow in the cliffs south of the temples contained a stash of forty royal mummies brought there from the Valley of the Kings. The tomb was probably originally built for priests of the 21st dynasty. , probably the family of Pinedjem II. In 1891 a larger cache containing 153 buried mummies of the priests themselves was also found in a tomb at the site now known as Bab el-Gasus. He has another tomb not far from Deir el-Bahari, where his body may have been buried but was also vandalized and stolen.

Stone chest

The stone chest contained various items, all covered with linen. A goose skeleton was found in one of them, which was sacrificed for religious purposes. The second contained goose eggs. The third bundle is believed to have contained an ibis egg, which had symbolic meaning to the ancient Egyptians. A small wooden jewelry box was also discovered in the package; the chest is believed to contain the name of Pharaoh Thutmosis II.

It was perfectly camouflaged and looked like an ordinary block of stone. It was only on closer inspection that it turned out to be a chest.