Deir el-Bahari is a sacred place known as temple, its literal meaning is “The Northern Monastery” which is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt.
Mentuhotep II, Eleventh Dynasty king who conciliate Egypt at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, built a very unusual funerary complex. His mortuary temple was built on several levels in the great bay at Deir el-Bahari.
It was approached by a 16-metre-wide causeway leading from a valley temple which no longer exists.The mortuary temple itself consists of a forecourt, enclosed by walls on three sides, and a terrace on which stands a large square structure that may represent the primeval mound that arose from the waters of chaos. As the temple faces east, the structure is likely to be connected with the sun.
The cult of the dead king centred on the small shrine cut into the rear of the Hypostyle Hall.The inner part of the temple was actually cut into the cliff and consists of a colonnaded court, a hypostyle hall and an underground passage leading into the tomb itself.
The main point of the Deir el-Bahari complex is the Djeser-Djeseru meaning “the Holy of Holies”, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. It is a peristyle structure, which was designed and implemented by Senenmut, royal steward and architect of Hatshepsut to serve for her posthumous worship and to honor the glory of Amun.
Djeser-Djeseru sits atop a series of colonnaded terraces, reached by long ramps that once were charmed with gardens. It is built into a cliff face that rises sharply above it, and is largely considered to be one of the “incomparable monuments of ancient Egypt”.
