Temple of Hatshepsut

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I and the widow of Thutmose II. She first ruled as regent for her young stepson Thutmose III, then took the full titles of a king, and was often shown in male royal dress with a false beard. Her reign of about 20 years was peaceful and prosperous, with major building across Egypt.

Her temple, called Djeser-djeseru ('Holiest of Holies'), rises in three colonnaded terraces joined by ramps. Reliefs record her divine birth as the daughter of Amun and a trade expedition to the distant land of Punt, bringing back incense trees, ebony and exotic animals.

Some two decades after her death, many of her images and names were chiselled away, probably under Thutmose III as he secured the succession for his own line. A Polish-Egyptian mission has spent decades reconstructing the temple from thousands of fragments.

On the temple's middle terrace, the chapel of the goddess Hathor has columns topped with her face, with cow's ears. Nearby, the Punt reliefs show the expedition ships loaded with incense trees, and even the queen of Punt, drawn with unusual realism.

In a cliff shaft just south of the temple, priests of the 21st Dynasty hid the mummies of earlier kings to save them from tomb robbers. The cache, known today as TT320, was traced by the Antiquities Service in 1881 after local families had been selling objects from it; it held the mummies of Seti I, Ramses II and many others, now in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.