Quick questions on Hatshepsut's building program: HSC Ancient History

Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, called Djeser-Djeseru ("Holy of Holies"), is the centrepiece of her building program. It sits on the west bank of the Nile in the Theban necropolis, in the bay below the cliff, next to the much-ruined 11th-Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep II.

Hatshepsut commissioned two pairs of granite obelisks for the Karnak temple of Amun-Re, quarried at Aswan and transported by river barge.

A small bark shrine (a structure to house the portable bark in which Amun travelled during festivals) built within Karnak under Hatshepsut. Constructed of red quartzite and black granite, with elaborate relief decoration.

A rock-cut temple at Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt, dedicated to the lioness goddess Pakhet (called "Artemis" by later Greeks; hence "Speos Artemidos," the Cave of Artemis).

Karnak. The Eighth Pylon, bark shrines, chapels, the small temple of Ipet-resyt (the predecessor of the Luxor temple).

Religious legitimation. The divine birth reliefs at Deir el-Bahri established her divine descent from Amun-Re. The Karnak obelisks honoured Amun directly. The Speos Artemidos inscription positioned her as a restorer of ma'at. Religion and politics were inseparable.

Joyce Tyldesley (Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, 1996) treats the building program as the central political and religious project of the reign.

Three terraces rise toward the cliff. Each terrace has a colonnaded portico fronting it. Ramps connect the terraces.

Senenmut, Hatshepsut's chief steward, is credited with the architectural design. The graffito in tomb TT 71 (Senenmut's tomb), inscriptions at Deir el-Bahri, and the small statues of Senenmut found at the temple all support the attribution.

The middle colonnade contains two of the most-studied relief programs in Egyptian art.

Large numbers of statues of Hatshepsut lined the terraces and the offering courtyard. Many were systematically destroyed under Thutmose III in the proscription after Hatshepsut's death; fragments have been excavated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art expedition and partially reassembled.

Khenemet-Ankh, a mortuary temple for her father Thutmose I, was built adjacent to her own at Deir el-Bahri.

Hatshepsut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, with a complex descending shaft. She arranged for her father Thutmose I to be reburied here. After her death, Thutmose I was moved again (probably to KV 38).

The Speos Artemidos.

Various restorations of monuments damaged in the Hyksos period or in earlier intermediate periods.