Lipinska Totmes Ksiazka:Layout 1 - Uniwersytet Warszawski · 2018. 10. 16. · written record of...

Jadwiga Lipińska

DEIR EL-BAHARITEMPLE OF TUTHMOSIS III

Lipinska Totmes Ksiazka:Layout 1 2007-09-19 10:51 Page 105

In 1961, when a Polish-Egyptianteam embarked on studies for the recon-struction of the Queen Hatshepsut templeat Deir el-Bahari, Kazimierz Michałowskiordered the clearance of a huge heap ofrocky debris outside the southwestern part ofthe third terrace of the great temple. Previousexcavators had left the place unexplored andit had served them as a convenient spot fordepositing garbage. Michałowski wanted toexpose the southwestern part of the templeand in the process to check for architecturalfragments for the reconstruction of the greattemple. Unexpectedly, just two weeks afterstarting the clearance, early in 1962, partlypreserved columns still standing on theirbases were discovered and scattered amongthem were parts of broken statues and frag-mentary polychrome reliefs. A hitherto un-known temple had been discovered.

The newly discovered temple soonproved to be one of the many edifices

founded by the great warrior and builderTuthmosis III; it was called Djeser-akhet(Holy of Horizon) and was constructed inthe last decade of the pharaoh's reign,about 1435-1425 BC, under the supervi-sion of the vizier Rekhmire. The earliestwritten record of building activity dates tothe pharaoh's 43rd regnal year. The sitechosen for erecting the edifice was very un-suitable – a steep rocky slope between twostanding temples of Mentuhotep-Nebhep-etre and Hatshepsut. The rock surface hadto be cut both vertically and horizontallyto create a platform for the new building.Even so, the resulting space was irregular inshape and too narrow, and had to bewidened by means of an artificial platformconstructed as a huge stone frame filledwith debris and covered with slabs. This cre-ated a temple terrace about 3.50 m higherthan the neighboring upper part of the Hat-shepsut temple and about 14 m higher than

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Deir el-Bahari. Temple of Tuthmosis III


the Mentuhotep temple platform. Pave-ment slabs were then laid and huge sand-stone blocks placed for the bases of thecolumns, and then the building was con-structed.

It was the uppermost part of thetemple, because like other edifices at Deirel-Bahari the Djeser-akhet was a terracedstructure with sloping ramps leading to thehigher levels. The facades of these templesconsisted of colonnaded or pillared porticoesflanking the ramps. With their three parallelprocessional avenues, the Deir el-Bahari tem-ples created a harmonious architectural com-plex that is unmatched in the history ofarchitecture; all the greater the pity thatonly one of these edifices, reconstructed,stands today.

The lower end of the Tuthmosis IIItemple ramp can still be seen, unlike theporticoes of which only meager foundationscan be traced. A number of decorated frag-ments of square pillars from the porticoeswere also found. The only part of the templethat escaped destruction was the innermostpart of the shrine of the cow-goddessHathor. The finely decorated shrine, discov-ered in 1906 behind the northwestern cor-ner of the Mentuhotep temple, had beentransferred to the Egyptian Museum in Cairotogether with its beautiful statue of the god-dess Hathor as a cow.

Clearing of the upper, main part ofthe temple continued until 1967 and in re-cent decades the site was partly restored tostop further destruction. The ruins consistedof the remnants of a great colonnaded hallpreceded by the entrance portico and a rowof shrines behind it. An earthquake at theend of the New Kingdom destroyed part ofthe building, including the artificial platformand all of the constructions on it. Those built

on the rock platform were damaged but sur-vived: the lower drums of some polygonalcolumns still in place on their bases, parts ofthe pavements and wall foundations, thedoor jambs (including lower parts of a redgranite doorway) and many scattered ele-ments. On this basis it was possible to re-construct theoretically the original shape ofthe building.

The great colonnaded hall was themost impressive part of the building and oneof great importance for the history of ancientEgyptian architecture. In size (38 x 26.50 m)it conformed to the so called Upper Court ofthe Hatshepsut temple, and it was likewisefurnished with colonnades framing the center.Were it not for rebuilding even while thetemple was under construction, it would haveprobably been an exact copy of Hatshep-sut's court. It had 76 sixteen-sided polygonalcolumns (c. 0.90 m in diameter, 5.60 m high)surrounding a double row of twelve larger32- faceted columns (1.10 m in diameter)evidently supporting a roof on a level higherthan in the aisles. Judging by the fragmentsof mullioned windows, the interior waslighted from above and constructed as abasilica, the second one in Egyptian templearchitecture after the earlier Karnak hall ofthe Jubilee temple Akh-menu founded alsoby Tuthmosis III. But the architectural schemeof that basilica is quite different and the oneat Deir el-Bahari appears to be a step for-ward toward the hypostyles of the Nine-teenth Dynasty.

From the hypostyle one entered aBark Room and sanctuary or possibly eventwo sanctuaries, one for each of the twoforms of Amun worshipped in the temple,Amun-Re and Amun-Kamutef. After theEighteenth Dynasty the goddess Hathor ap-pears to have become mistress of the whole

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Jadwiga Lipińska


Deir el-Bahari. Temple of Tuthmosis III

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temple, as witnessed by numerous pilgrims'graffiti left on the walls and columns.

The debris covering the ruins yieldedthousands of pieces of fragmentary walldecoration with admirably fresh poly-chromy preserved on the delicate reliefs.This state of preservation is certainly due tothe comparatively short, in terms of ancientEgypt, existence of the temple (from the15th to the 11th century BC) and the limitedtime during which the roofless shrines stoodopen to the elements. In the partly ruinedbuilding stonecutters took over and wallblocks, architraves, ceiling slabs and otherelements of the temple were dismantled,then cut for re-use and the decoration chiseledaway. The resulting flakes of stone can befitted together, like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle,but without an expensive program for therestoration and recreation of missing blocksthe reconstruction of the temple decorationremains a purely theoretical undertaking.

Archaeologists began studying thefive thousand complete or only partly dam-aged wall blocks of limestone and sand-stone, and the innumerable smallerfragments and paper-thin flakes in 1978and they have still to finish the work (whichwas interrupted in 1996). Nonetheless, theiconographic scheme has been worked outfor most of the temple walls and a publica-tion is under preparation. This work wascarried out by a Polish-Egyptian team of ar-chaeologists, restorers and artists, and sup-ported financially by the Supreme Councilof Antiquities of Egypt and the Polish Centreof Mediterranean Archaeology of the Uni-versity of Warsaw, supervised by the authorof this contribution.

The decoration was typical of theperiod, encompassing three main themes:Offering Ritual with the king offering alter-

nately to two forms of Amun, scenes ofroyal cult (e.g. symbolic coronation, purifi-cation, leading the king or embracing himby the god or goddess and suckling him byHathor, and lastly, the procession of theBeautiful Feast of the Valley with the sacredbark of Amun carried by priests or standingon its stand. All the images of gods, exceptAtum, were destroyed during the Amarnaperiod and later restored. The sacred barkof Amun was also hacked away, a layer ofplaster was spread on the uneven surface inplace of the original relief and a new imageof a bark with the name of Horemheb waspainted on it. It is likely that all the restora-tions in the temple were ordered by this king.All the inscriptions concerning the gods weredestroyed and later restored, and theirbackground was painted white, unlike theoriginal Tuthmoside gray-blue. All the un-touched images of the king retained theiroriginal appearance and polychromy, and insome cases they are the only existing recordsof colors of the royal attire, as e.g. the red kilt(sendjot) worn together with the Red Crownin some scenes of the king running to thegod. Indeed, the materials brought to lightin the ruined temple of Tuthmosis III containrepresentations never encountered in con-temporary tombs or in other temples wherethe colors have vanished. Consequently,their importance for studies of the art of thefirst half of the Eighteenth Dynasty cannotbe underestimated. Other finds from theruins of the temple included royal, divineand private statuary, votive stelae and otherofferings. One of the most important findswas a statue of Tuthmosis III enthroned,made of dark gray quartz-diorite and almost2 m tall. Another discovered statue, sculptedof white, partly polychromed marble, de-picted a striding king. In the early 20th cen-


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tury, Edouard Naville excavating in the tem-ple of Mentuhotep found a faceless headwith torso which he sent to the MetropolitanMuseum of Art. The face and several otherfragments were recovered by the Polish teamfrom the ruins of the Tuthmosis III temple;the face is now in the Egyptian Museum inCairo, but other fragments which could beused in a partial restoration of the statue, arestill in the stores. Parts of four or five red-granite headless statues of the same kingwere also discovered, as well as a head whichmay have belonged to a statue of Amen-hotep III. The statuary found in the templeof Mentuhotep must have slid there fromthe edifice of Tuthmosis III at the time of itsdestruction. But how did some pretty bigstone fragments from the ruined Men-tuhotep temple ascend almost 17 m to beleft in the debris covering the site of theTuthmosis III temple? Fragmentary reliefs

from the building of Hatshepsut were alsofound there, but in their case it seems likelythat they were moved there in effect ofPtolemaic or Coptic activity inside thequeen's temple.

Once the ancient stonecutters ceasedquarrying the ruins for materials, the remainsof the temple slowly disappeared under amound of rubble. In Coptic times, the areawas made into a burial ground: several nat-urally mummified bodies of the monks fromthe nearby monastery installed inside theHatshepsut temple were found on the site.

In considering the Tuthmosis III tem-ple today, we must imagine how it oncedominated the complex of temples at Deirel-Bahari, creating in effect a perfect archi-tectural setting – like a stage – for the func-tion it was made to serve, that is, receivingprocessions during the Beautiful Feast of theValley.

Select bibliographyJ. LIPIŃSKA, The Temple of Tuthmosis III. Architecture, Deir el-Bahari II, Varsovie 1977J. LIPIŃSKA, The Temple of Tuthmosis III. Statuary and Votive Monuments, Deir el-Bahari IV,Varsovie 1984R. CZERNER, S. MEDEKSZA, The new observations on the architecture of the temple of Tuth-mosis III at Deir el-Bahari, in: Sesto Congresso Internazionale di Egittologia. Atti, vol. I, Torino1992, pp.119-123


Amun Kamutef, wall block from the temple of Tuthmosis III (Photo J. Lipińska’s archives)


Remains of the colonnaded hall in the Tuthmosis III temple at Deir el-Bahari (Photo J. Lipińska’s archives)

Tuthmosis III on partly assembled fragments of a wall block

(Photo J. Lipińska’s archives)


Statue of Tuthmosis III discovered in 1965 (Photo J. Lipińska’s archives)


Wall blocks and fragments of blocks from the temple of Tuthmosis in storage (Photo J. Lipińska’s archives)

Model of three temples at Deir el-Bahari, from left to right, Mentuhotep, Tuthmosis III, Queen Hatshepsut

(Photo J. Lipińska’s archives)


Lipinska Totmes Ksiazka:Layout 1 - Uniwersytet Warszawski · 2018. 10. 16. · written record of...

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