Temple of Hatshepsut

UNESCO World Heritage Site: Ancient Thebes With Its Necropolis (1979). Three Colonnaded Terraces Built Into A Cliff Amphitheatre For Egypt'S Most Successful Female Pharaoh, Carrying The Reliefs Of Her Trading Expedition To Punt, And Systematically Defaced By Her Successor After Her Death · Luxor, Luxor

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt for about twenty years in the fifteenth century BC, as a woman holding the full titles of a pharaoh, and the temple she built at Deir el-Bahari is the most architecturally confident building of the New Kingdom: three colonnaded terraces rising on ramps into a natural amphitheatre of cliff, so that the rock behind becomes part of the design. It was dug out, pieced together and largely rebuilt by Polish and Egyptian teams over decades, which is why it looks so complete. The reliefs on the middle terrace record her trading expedition to Punt - ships, incense trees in baskets, a foreign queen - and alongside them you can see where her successor Thutmose III had her name and face systematically chiselled out after her death. There is no shade, the cliff reflects heat back at you, and the whole thing is twenty minutes from the Valley of the Kings, so do both at dawn. Bring water: there is no shade anywhere on those terraces.

Against the cliff at Deir el-Bahari on the west bank, about 2 km from the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Luxor, Egypt

Open daily from early morning to late afternoon, shorter in winter. This is a dawn site: the temple faces east into the morning sun, which lights the terraces and is the only time the amphitheatre is not radiating heat. A shuttle train runs from the car park to the foot of the ramps, which saves several hundred metres of exposed walking - confirm it is running, because it has not always been. Which chapels on the upper terrace are open varies, and the Hathor and Anubis chapels are the ones to ask about. Coach parties arrive from mid-morning. The west bank is reached by the local ferry or the bridge, and almost everyone comes by hired car combining this with the Valley of the Kings and one more site before the heat.

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