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The upper colonnades of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple
at Deir el-Bahari.
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The Queen Who Would Be King
by Peter Tyson
March 10, 1999
The view from the summit of the mountain known as Meret Seger,
or "Lover of Silence," which I climbed yesterday, is
magnificent in almost every direction. To the north and west
spread the high, desiccated hills of the Valley of the Kings,
the tombs of numerous New Kingdom pharaohs punched into them.
Far below to the east, a god's lawn of fields stretches to the
Nile, a procession of funerary temples marching south along
their bursting-green edges.
The most intriguing part of the view, however, lies due east.
Directly below you—so direct that a misstep could send
you hurtling several hundred feet down onto its upper
terrace—stands the mortuary temple of the pharaoh
Hatshepsut, one of the great obelisk-raisers. From our perch
on the barren, flint-strewn summit, the temple's long entrance
ramps appear to point toward the rising sun, and if you
followed the line they suggested across those green fields and
over the Nile, your eye on a clear day would fall on Karnak
Temple, the St. Peter's of the New Kingdom.
This is exactly what Hatshepsut intended. It was all part of a
master plan of monument raising designed in large measure to
impress the priests and populace of Thebes.
Built at the base of the "Lover of Silence,"
Hatshepsut's temple is half rock-cut and half
free-standing.
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Why would a pharaoh have to impress his people? For one thing,
Hatshepsut had wrested the throne from its designated owner,
Tuthmosis III, a boy when he inherited the post upon the death
of his father, Tuthmosis II. For another, despite being the
self-proclaimed King, Hatshepsut happened to be a woman. She
was the daughter of the first Tuthmosis, husband of the
second, and aunt and stepmother of the third, so she wasn't a
nobody. But she knew it was dicey pushing aside her young
nephew at the beginning of the 15th century B.C.
To placate the powers that be, she went on a building spree,
throwing up temples throughout Egypt and Nubia to honor
various and sundry local deities. At Thebes, she ordered up
the palatial mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari.
Carved into the eroded cliffs below the Lover of Silence, the
triple-colonnaded temple is at once one of the masterpieces of
ancient Egyptian architecture and utterly unlike any other
building in the canon. For our team's purposes, Hatshepsut's
most important contributions to Thebes took place at Karnak,
where she put up, among many other monuments, no fewer than
four obelisks.
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While Hatshepsut was the queen of obelisks, the king
was surely Ramses the Great, here seated before the
Grand Colonnade at Luxor Temple.
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"The King himself [sic] erected two large obelisks for her
father Amun-Re before the august columned hall, wrought very
much with electrum," Hatshepsut declares on a block from her
red quartzite shrine at Karnak. (Electrum is a natural alloy
of gold and silver.) "Their heights pierce the sky and make
illumination for the Two Lands like the sun-disk...."
To a significant degree, historians owe what little they know
of obelisk raising from archaic sources to Hatshepsut. (When I
asked how to pronounce her name, our avuncular driver Hagag
smiled and said, "Just say 'hot chicken soup.' and you'll be
close.") In an inscription at the base of her standing obelisk
at Karnak, Hatshepsut describes how long it took to quarry,
ship, and uplift the second pair of obelisks she raised there:
"My Majesty began work on them in Year 15, second month of
Winter, day 1, continuing until Year 16, fourth month of
Summer, day 30, making seven months in cutting [them] from the
mountain." Scholars don't necessarily believe her
claim—seven months seems exaggeratedly brief—but
it's the only such reference known.
We must thank Hatshepsut, too, for giving us the only insight
we have on how the pharaohs transported their obelisks. Our
NOVA team specifically went to Hatshepsut's temple yesterday
to see the so-called "Obelisk Colonnade." Here, high on a wall
of fragmentary plaster that still retains traces of yellow and
red paint, I could just make out a relief depicting two
obelisks laid end to end on a barge. To the right, an
estimated 30 boats, with crews thought to total more than
1,000 men, tow the barge down the Nile. When we get to Aswan,
we will try our hand at loading and transporting a two-ton
obelisk aboard a similar kind of barge, to get an
approximation of the difficulties Hatshepsut's boatbuilders
faced.
Stonemasons begin shaping the NOVA obelisk in Aswan.
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Unfortunately for Hatshepsut, Tuthmosis III, after reassuming
his long-lost post and reigning for many years, systematically
defaced her image and chipped away her name wherever they
appeared at Karnak and Deir el-Bahari. (It appears to have
been not so much vengeance as to put the official record
straight to ensure proper succession.) Nevertheless, as I
could see so clearly from our arial atop the Lover of Silence,
she had achieved one of her main goals: to raise memorable
monuments to Amun, "His Majesty who placed the kingship of
Egypt, the deserts, and all foreign lands under my
sandals."
Next: Tomorrow the team will visit the Great Temple of
Amun-Re at Karnak, so large it could hold several football
fields. In Aswan, meanwhile, stonemasons are working
round-the-clock to fashion a multi-ton granite shaft into an
obelisk proper.
Peter Tyson is Online Producer of NOVA.
Obelisk Raised! (September 12)
In the Groove (September 1)
The Third Attempt (August 27)
Angle of Repose (March 25)
A Tale of Two Obelisks (March 24)
Rising Toward the Sun (March 23)
Into Position (March 22)
On an Anthill in Aswan (March 21)
Ready to Go (March 20)
Gifts of the River (March 19)
By Camel to a Lost Obelisk (March 18)
The Unfinished Obelisk (March 16)
Pulling Together (March 14)
Balloon Flight Over Ancient Thebes (March 12)
The Queen Who Would Be King (March 10)
Rock of Ages (March 8)
The Solar Barque (March 6)
Coughing Up an Obelisk (March 4)
Photos: (1-3) NOVA/WGBH; (4) Courtesy of Roger Hopkins.
Explore Ancient Egypt
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