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Authors: Joyce Tyldesley
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their reunion with the dead. After the climax of the Feast, a religious rite performed at sunrise, Amen sailed back to his temple, and the bleary-eyed townsfolk returned home to bed.
The Djeser-Djeseru was surrounded by a thick limestone enclosure wall. Once through the gate, Amen passed immediately into a peaceful, pleasantly shaded garden area where T-shaped pools glinted in the sunlight and trees – almost certainly the famous fragrant treesfrom Punt – offered a tempting respite from the fierce desert sun. Looking upwards, Amen would have seen the temple in all its glory; a softly gleaming white limestone building occupying three ascending terraces set back against the cliff, its tiered porticoes linked by a long, open-air stairway rising through the centre of the temple towards the sanctuary. Amen's route lay upwards. Passing over the lower portico he reached the flat second terrace where his path was marked out by pairs of colossal, painted red-granite sphinxes, each with Hatchepsut's head, inscribed to ‘The King of Upper and Lower Egypt Maatkare, Beloved of Amen who is in the midst of Djeser-Djeseru , and given life forever’.
The second imposing stairway continued upwards so that Amen entered the body of the temple on its upper and most important level. Amen passed from the bright desert light to the cool shade and, making his way between the imposing pairs of kneeling colossal statues which lined the path to the sanctuary, he reached his journey's end; the haven of his own dark shrine cut deep into the living rock of the Theban mountain. Here the secret, sacred rites would be performed by torchlight, and magnificent offerings would first be presented to the god and then shared out between his priests.
It is possible that Hathor too only spent a limited amount of time at Djeser-Djeseru . A much-damaged scene on the northern wall of the outermost room of the shrine depicts the arrival of the barque of Amen at the Valley temple. Hathor's barque is also shown, as indeed are three empty royal barges which seem to belong to the two kings Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III and to their ‘queen’, the Princess Neferure. These three have presumably left their boats to join the festivities. The accompanying text suggests Hathor's visitor status:
Shouting by the crews of the royal boats, the youths of Thebes, the fair lads of the army of the entire land, of praises in greeting this god, Amen, Lord of Karnak, in his procession of the ‘Head of the Year’… at the time of causing this great goddess [Hathor] to proceed to rest in her temple in Djeser-Djeseru -Amen so that they [Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III] might achieve life forever. 19
Hathor, ‘Lady of the Sycamores’, ‘Mistress of Music’ and patron of love, motherhood, and drunkenness, could take several forms. She could appear as the nurturing cow-goddess who suckled amongst others the
Fig. 6.4 Hatchepsut being suckled by the goddess Hathor in the form of a cow
infant Hatchepsut, as the serpent goddess, the ‘living uraeus of Re’ who symbolized Egyptian kingship, as a beautiful young woman or as a bloodthirsty lion-headed avenger. She could even, in her more sinister role as the ‘Seven Hathors’, become a goddess of death. Hatchepsut seems to have felt a particular devotion for Hathor, a devotion which may well have stemmed from her period as queen-consort. Throughout the dynastic period successive queens of Egypt were each closely identified with Hathor, and indeed during the Old Kingdom several queens had left the seclusion of the harem to serve as priestesses in her temple. This tradition had faded somewhat during the Middle Kingdom, but the strong queens of the late 17th and early 18 th Dynasties had revived it, becoming firmly associated with the goddess in her dual role as divine consort and mother of a king. Our best-known example of a queen associated with Hathor comes from the smaller temple at Abu Simbel, Southern Egypt, whose colossal statues
The Djeser-Djeseru was surrounded by a thick limestone enclosure wall. Once through the gate, Amen passed immediately into a peaceful, pleasantly shaded garden area where T-shaped pools glinted in the sunlight and trees – almost certainly the famous fragrant treesfrom Punt – offered a tempting respite from the fierce desert sun. Looking upwards, Amen would have seen the temple in all its glory; a softly gleaming white limestone building occupying three ascending terraces set back against the cliff, its tiered porticoes linked by a long, open-air stairway rising through the centre of the temple towards the sanctuary. Amen's route lay upwards. Passing over the lower portico he reached the flat second terrace where his path was marked out by pairs of colossal, painted red-granite sphinxes, each with Hatchepsut's head, inscribed to ‘The King of Upper and Lower Egypt Maatkare, Beloved of Amen who is in the midst of Djeser-Djeseru , and given life forever’.
The second imposing stairway continued upwards so that Amen entered the body of the temple on its upper and most important level. Amen passed from the bright desert light to the cool shade and, making his way between the imposing pairs of kneeling colossal statues which lined the path to the sanctuary, he reached his journey's end; the haven of his own dark shrine cut deep into the living rock of the Theban mountain. Here the secret, sacred rites would be performed by torchlight, and magnificent offerings would first be presented to the god and then shared out between his priests.
It is possible that Hathor too only spent a limited amount of time at Djeser-Djeseru . A much-damaged scene on the northern wall of the outermost room of the shrine depicts the arrival of the barque of Amen at the Valley temple. Hathor's barque is also shown, as indeed are three empty royal barges which seem to belong to the two kings Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III and to their ‘queen’, the Princess Neferure. These three have presumably left their boats to join the festivities. The accompanying text suggests Hathor's visitor status:
Shouting by the crews of the royal boats, the youths of Thebes, the fair lads of the army of the entire land, of praises in greeting this god, Amen, Lord of Karnak, in his procession of the ‘Head of the Year’… at the time of causing this great goddess [Hathor] to proceed to rest in her temple in Djeser-Djeseru -Amen so that they [Hatchepsut and Tuthmosis III] might achieve life forever. 19
Hathor, ‘Lady of the Sycamores’, ‘Mistress of Music’ and patron of love, motherhood, and drunkenness, could take several forms. She could appear as the nurturing cow-goddess who suckled amongst others the
Fig. 6.4 Hatchepsut being suckled by the goddess Hathor in the form of a cow
infant Hatchepsut, as the serpent goddess, the ‘living uraeus of Re’ who symbolized Egyptian kingship, as a beautiful young woman or as a bloodthirsty lion-headed avenger. She could even, in her more sinister role as the ‘Seven Hathors’, become a goddess of death. Hatchepsut seems to have felt a particular devotion for Hathor, a devotion which may well have stemmed from her period as queen-consort. Throughout the dynastic period successive queens of Egypt were each closely identified with Hathor, and indeed during the Old Kingdom several queens had left the seclusion of the harem to serve as priestesses in her temple. This tradition had faded somewhat during the Middle Kingdom, but the strong queens of the late 17th and early 18 th Dynasties had revived it, becoming firmly associated with the goddess in her dual role as divine consort and mother of a king. Our best-known example of a queen associated with Hathor comes from the smaller temple at Abu Simbel, Southern Egypt, whose colossal statues
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