Deir El Bahri Temple

Two graffiti of Senenmut from the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari are presented in this paper: one located in the granite portal leading to the Upper Court of the temple, and another in the entrance to the Chapel of Thutmose I in the Royal Mortuary Cult Complex. In addition, photographs of heavily erased graffiti of Senenmut in the entrance to the Chapel of Hatshepsut are published here as well.

Full-text PDF available here: http://etudesettravaux.iksiopan.pl/images/etudtrav/EtudTrav_otwarte/EtudTrav_33/EtudTrav_33_02_Barwik_compressed.pdf

Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, Deir el Bahri is located on the Giza plateau of the West Bank at Luxor. It majestically rises up against the tall limestone cliffs near the secluded Valley of the Kings (KV) across the Nile from the capital of Thebes. This most unusual monument is an unprecedented beauty throughout the ancient world, “built to emphasize the divine birth of the pharaoh.” (STWE: 157.) The paintings and inscriptions on this temple are dedicated to Hathor and reflect afterlife offerings intended for Hatshepsut. * In addition to Hathor, Hatshepsut also aligned herself with Sekhmet and the primal mother goddess Mut, an option that was not afforded male pharaohs. (WAE: 140; STWE: 117, 157.)
* (Temple inscriptions also “record her divine birth as a child of Amun (Amon) and Queen child of Amun and Queen Ahmose.” (WAE: 140.))

Abstract: Chemical analyses of ancient Pistacia resins found in pharaonic contexts have so  far  failed  to go beyond  the genus  level,  to  reach  the  species  level. This  failure  hinders  the  identification  of  the  precise  identity  of  the  Pistacia  species brought  during  this  period  to  the  Nile  Valley,  and  the  subsequent  historical  and economic  conclusions  which  would  result  from  such  exact  identifications particularly in relation to foreign trade. The general purpose of the present study is to synthesize  the current state of  research so as  to stimulate  the  future solving of this  problem.

On the inner north wall of the Southern Room of Amun in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari there is a depiction of the so-called frieze of objects, arranged in two rows. In the upper one vessels with oils containing four out of the so-called seven sacred oils and ʿntjw were located. It can be observed that in the sequence of the oils from the ‘seven sacred oils’, the third one – sfṯ – has been replaced by ʿntjw and the two last oils are not depicted at all. In this paper the possible reasons for such a replacement as well as the role of both aromatic substances in the temple ritual in the early Eighteenth Dynasty are examined.

A set of wooden figures representing female deities with painted fronts and flat backs was identified in the archaeological material coming from recent excavations in the Chapel of Hatshepsut. The fragments were scattered through the shafts of Third Intermediate Period date. Most probably they had once formed a single piece of funerary equipment from one of the burials. Remains of nine figures were distinguished. These were divided into two groups by size. The small-scale figures had outstretched arms, while the big-scale ones were shown with one arm raised and the other lowered alongside the body. They are presumed to have been attached to a flat wooden background. Both iconographical types are attested in the decoration of mortuary equipment from the New Kingdom on, though no object decorated with the same set of goddesses has been found so far.

Transplanting in the Center by Hatshepsut.

Transplanting trees from the peripheries to the center was a known leitmotif in the Ancient Near East. Gardens served as a symbol of life, fertility, prosperity, change and power, and represented the integration of an "ideological" or a "geographical" expansion in Antiquity. The garden of Hatshepsut was a microcosm, which incorporated trees from Punt, symbolizing the ideological control of an "unknown" remote land, and the concrete elimination of "intermediaries" and "payments" to obtain these exotic goods.

Trasplantando en el centro por Hatshepsut.

El trasplante de árboles desde áreas periféricas hacia un centro fue un recurso conocido en el Cercano Oriente antiguo. En la
Antigüedad, los jardines fueron símbolos de vida, fertilidad,
prosperidad, cambio, poder, y representaron la integración de una expansión "ideológica" o "geográfica". El jardín de Hatshepsut fue un microcosmos, que incorporó árboles del Punt, simbolizando el control ideológico de una tierra remota "no conocida", y la eliminación real de "intermediarios" y "pagos" para obtener estos bienes exóticos.

This article aims to analyse the behavioural response generated by people who came into contact with civilisations and places whose existence was previously unknown or only remotely registered in their collective knowledge. Three major cases have been taken into consideration: a.) the “discovery” of America during the sixteenth century when Europeans entered in contact with Aztecs, Cakchiquels, and Andeans; b.) the encounters with the civilisations in Tahiti and Hawaii during the eighteenth century, and c.) the ancient Egyptian arrival at Punt during the fifteenth century under the reign of queen Hatshepsut. Although spatially and chronologically separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, in all of these cases the “encounterers” (i.e., the ones who were moving towards the unknown or distant and contemporaries who were writing their own history) tended to project a self-perceived supremacy over the encountered people, configured as a spontaneous feeling of their supremacy over the local population (hence a “counterfeit” emic notion). In all the above cases, the “encountering” event gave rise to the creation of an “apotheosis” myth, in which the encounterers were supposed to be seen, and believed in, as “gods coming from the sky.” Applying concepts from the cognitive science to these historical events, the article aims to scrutinize the mental categories that tended to generate such a belief of divine superiority projected in the vision of the Other. Rather than being marginalized as an episodic event, the formation of an apotheosis myth can be interpreted as part of a global process, which emerges in the human mind-frame, solicited by mental processes and in contact with a number of similar external outputs.

During epigraphic works carried out in the Southern Room of Amun (Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari) in season of 2014/2015 painted decoration of two chests with sloping lid from the frieze of objects was recorded. On the side of each chest there are two offering scenes, painted with the use of red colour on the yellow background.
In those scenes Hatshepsut is the celebrant and Amun-Re is the beneficiary of the offered goods. Names of the king and the god are originally preserved. The content of these chests, described with the use of labelling inscriptions next to each one of them, and the royal iconography in offering scenes are an expression of the renewal
aspect, referring to the king. No analogies to this type of decoration on chests have been found so far.

Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, La Reine Mysterieuse (the Mysterious Queen) Hatshepsut, Pygmalion, Paris, 2002, 504p.

The last book of the famous French Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Noblecourt is dedicated to a not yet very well-known royal person of the Pharaonic times: Maatkare Hatshepsut, the First Queen of the World History. The importance of Hatshepsut lies above all in the fact that, referring to her, we use the term "queen" not in the simple sense "wife to a Pharaoh", but with the meaning of the sole and indisputable ruler of the country. In that way, Hatshepsut has truly been the first queen all over the World! Daughter to Tuthmosis I, wife to Tuthmosis II and aunt to Tuthmosis III, Maatkare Hatshepsut prevented the latter from becoming a Pharaoh and fully exercising his tasks, and she ruled in his stead for about 20 years, 1479 - 1457 according to the recent studies of Desroches-Noblecourt (p. 8 - 10).
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First published in the Egyptian monthly CLEO, October 2002
Republished online in Buzzle: 2nd August 2005
Transformed into a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEH9cFUoyfw

Update 2023: This book is now published:
Bibliothèque Générale 73, IFAO Cairo.
Three volumes: I: Catalog. II. Evaluation and directories. III: Facsimiles and transcriptions. Some photos will be available on the IFAO website.

Aktualisierung 2023: Dieses Buch ist nunmehr erschienen:
Bibliothèque Générale 73, IFAO Kairo.
Drei Bände: I: Katalog. II. Auswertung und Verzeichnisse. III: Faksimiles und Transcriptionen. Fotos werden teilweise auf der Seite des IFAO erreichbar sein.

https://www.ifao.egnet.net/publications/catalogue/BiGen/

ABSTRACT: This lecture examines mid-late Dynasty 11, starting with Montuhotep II, the conflict with the rival northern kingdom (the Herakleopolitans), and reunification.  The lecture poses and attempts to address various questions: Why did the Theban kingdom feel the need to reunite all of Egypt? (i.e., a return to glory days of ED-OK Egypt? Ancestral linkage to OK? Abydos?); How did the Theban kingdom (i.e., Montuhotep II) reunify all Egypt? ca.2040 BC?; What territories did the northern enemy kingdom control? Middle Egypt only?; What evidence is used to recreate this process of re-unification? Texts? Archaeology?; Having re-unified all Egypt, what else did Montuhotep II do, if at all, to recreate/draw upon the “Old Kingdom”?; (i.e., subduing frontier peoples; grand building projects; adopting Old Kingdom art forms); How did Montuhotep II reward his followers? loyal officials within Southern Egypt?; How did Montuhotep II treat the defeated enemy ruler(s) & northern governors?; What evidence do we have for preferential treatment of Southern Egyptians?; What major innovation occurs regarding Montuhotep II’s mortuary complex? (i.e., How is it similar to and dissimilar to Old Kingdom pyramid complexes?); What evidence do we have for the last rulers of Dynasty 11? Montuhotep III-IV?; How does Dynasty 11 end? Why does it disintegrate? No heir? Civil war? Etc.; What important data can we glean from the surviving Middle Kingdom literary sources? (i.e., Using diverse textual sources appropriately as “historical sources”).  The Heqanakht papers/letters provide a reference to famine and cannibalism (to the south of Thebes), and also daily life intrigues, household administration, and farming practices in southern Egypt. The lecture also provides an example of some Coffin texts using the tomb of Nakht-Ankh, and summarizes important pieces of Middle Kingdom literature, with a focus on two pieces for student reading (e.g., Tale of the Eloquent Peasant [i.e., regional trade; justice; law]; Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor [sailing; Red Sea; Punt]). UPDATED: April 7, 2023: This lecture was edited, reformatted in some areas, and had a few new slides added (especially in a selected bibliography at the end).

Two information boards presenting crucial information about the Main Sanctuary of Amun in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari situated in Ptolemaic Portico of the temple. Texts were prepared by Dr F. Pawlicki and layout was designed by A. Golijewskaja.

This paper explores 32 inscribed objects from foundation deposits of the Temple of Thutmose III, Djeserakhet, at Deir el-Bahari. They contain ointment jars, chisels, saws, axes, surveyor’s stakes, ‘Opening of the Mouth’ adzes, a grinder, and a model of a rocker. They are kept at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the museum database records that they were found at Sheikh Abd el-Qurna; however, the method of acquisition is unknown. This paper evaluates these pieces of information in light of the inscriptions on these objects and other objects from foundation deposits for the same king from the same site, Djeserakhet (which are scattered in different museums around the world), to reconstruct their archaeological context. This paper also notes the current museum inventory numbers of these objects to create a network of the entire group. It closely scrutinizes these objects, their inscriptions, the techniques used for engraving them, and the addressed deity

Since 1999 archaeological works have been carried above the Hatshepsut Temple in Deir el-Bahari (Upper Egypt). The excavations, led by professor A. Niwiński, are a part of the project called Polish-Egyptian Rock Mission. The objective of these works is to find Herhor’s tomb from the Middle Period. During auxiliary geological works of the Polish-Egyptian Rock Mission in 2001 the fissure system of cliff massif (gebel) in the region of archaeological works was measured. In antiquity some of the joints were used during mining works while preparing tombs. Therefore the investigation may be useful not only for tectonics and geology but also in archaeological investigation. Contemporary phenomena on the contact of two rocks complexes (shaly and limestone) as well as the jointing influence a lot the monuments in Deir el-Bahari and other valleys in the massif.

Two information boards presenting crucial information about the Main Sanctuary of Amun in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari situated in Ptolemaic Portico of the temple. Texts were prepared by Dr F. Pawlicki and layout was designed by A. Golijewskaja.