Chapter III: The Coming of the Great Queen

Published: Naville, _Deir el Bahari_, ii, pls. xlvi-li (with translation).

Translated: Breasted, _Ancient Records_, ii, 187-220.

The inscription, with the scenes illustrating it, are sculptured on the walls of the temple of Deir el Bahari, on the north side of the retaining wall of the upper platform.

The great building, known in modern times as the temple of Deir el Bahari, was erected by Queen Hatshepsut of the xviiith dynasty, about 1500 B.C., for the double purpose of her own funerary cult, and of the worship of the goddess Hathor. The chief events of the Queen's reign are sculptured on the walls; the record of her divine descent naturally holds a prominent place. The inscriptions in the temple were wrecked and restored anciently, therefore much of the record is lost. Fortunately, however, Amenhotep III, a king of the same dynasty rather more than a century later than Hatshepsut, adorned his temple of Luxor with similar scenes and inscriptions, relating to his own divine descent, changing of course the names of the mother and child and making a few immaterial alterations in the inscriptions. By means of this later example the whole of the earlier record is made clear.

The white colonnades of Hatshepsut's temple, set against a background of dark cliffs, form one of the most striking scenes in the valley of the Nile. The temple was used at one time as a Coptic village; hence its modern name of Deir el Bahari, the Northern Convent.

It has recently been excavated and restored by Dr. Navillo for the Egypt Exploration Fund.