HATSHEPSUT AND THE DJESER-DJESERU

On the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt, is Deir el-Bahari, a complex of mortuary-temples and tombs. Its pièce de résistance is the Djeser-Djeseru - "the Holy of Holies," or the "Wonder of Wonders," or the “Sacred of Sacreds” - The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.

One of the most beautiful of the royal mortuary temples, its terraces had gardens of frankincense trees and other rare plants, its walls and colonnades were decorated with painted reliefs. Its location was unique: in a valley sacred for over 500 years for being identified with the principal feminine goddess of the funeral world, on the axis of the temple of Amun of Karnak, and at a distance of only a few hundred meters in a straight line from the tomb that Hatshepsut had excavated for herself in the Valley of the Kings on the other side of the mountain.

Hatshepsut was the longest reigning (22 years) of the seven female Kings (Pharaohs) in the 3000-year history of ancient Egypt, though Cleopatra the Great, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, was the most famous. Hatshepsut was one of the most successful pharaohs: successful in warfare early on, her reign was prosperous and peaceful, and she raised the Ancient Egyptian architecture to a standard not rivalled by any other culture for a thousand years.   She was "the first great woman in history.”

A woman with pendulous breasts and rotten teeth who died of cancer at age 50, Hatshepsut was much more powerful than the more famous and more beautiful Cleopatra the Great.

Famed for her beauty and intellect, Cleopatra was in fact ordinary looking, but a great conversationalist: that is how she charmed two leaders - Julius Caesar and Mark Antony - from the greatest empire in the world. She was manipulative and ready to kill for her right to rule but also ready to die for her honor: when she and Mark Antony lost the war to Rome, she killed herself to avoid being paraded through the streets of Rome in chains in Octavian’s ‘triumph.’ Legend says that she killed herself by the bite of an asp (Egyptian cobra); but such death is painful, and she would have wanted to avoid pain. Research shows that she consumed a cocktail of poisons.

Two great women, two great Pharaohs.

Dance at Hatshepsut Temple – film: Singh is King, Akshay Kumar & Katrina Kaif