Free Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh by Joyce Tyldesley

of Queen Nefertari,wife of Ramesses II, show her represented as the goddess. Contemporary depictions of Hathor show her wearing the customary queen's regalia so that the link between the queen and the goddess is made obvious to all.
    Hatchepsut dedicated a number of shrines to Hathor in her various manifestations; these often took the form of a rock-cut sanctuary fronted by a colonnade or vestibule. The Speos Artemidos with its unfinished Hathor-headed pillars may be included amongst these, as Pakhet was a local version of Hathor's fierce lion-headed form. It is therefore not too surprising that Hatchepsut's mortuary temple, established on the site of a traditional shrine and home to a chapel dedicated to Hathor, includes many representations of this goddess. Here she is not only shown as a cow feeding the baby Hatchepsut, she plays an important role during Hatchepsut's birth and she even, in her role as ‘Mistress of Punt’, manages to gain a mention in the tale of Hatchepsut's epic mission. This link between Hatchepsut and a powerful, female-orientated mother-goddess is highly significant, suggesting as it does that Hatchepsut principally known for her association with the male god Amen may not have been averse to having her name linked with a predominantly feminine cult. 20

Fig. 6.5 Hathor in her anthropoid form
    Almost all New Kingdom cult temples were decorated with scenes intended to demonstrate the good relationship which existed between the king and his gods. The outer, more public parts of the temples (the pylon and courtyard) usually depicted the pharaoh in his most obviousrole, that of the warrior-king defending his land against the traditional enemies of Egypt, while the inner, more private areas showed more intimate scenes: here the king could be seen acting as high priest, or making an offering before the cult statue. Djeser-Djeseru cannot be classed as a typical New Kingdom temple. Not only did the building have an unprecedented three-tiered design, its owner also had her own unique propaganda message which she was determined to put across via the walls of her temple. Nevertheless, and bearing these two important differences in mind, the scenes found on the two lower porticoes do seem to contain the same mixture of public and more private scenes that we might expect to find at a more conventional temple site. 21
    The two broad stairways connecting the terraces effectively cut the temple in two, so that the two lower porticoes which front the temple are divided into four distinct sections. Here we find scenes depicting significant events from Hatchepsut's life and reign, all chosen to emphasize her filial devotion to Amen. Along the bottom south (or left hand as we face the temple) portico we see scenes of the refurbishment of the Great Temple of Amen at Karnak, including the erection of the famous obelisks, while on the opposite side of the same portico, which is now unfortunately much destroyed, we are shown Hatchepsut in her role as the traditional 18th Dynasty huntin’, shootin' and fishin' pharaoh; she takes the form of an awesome sphinx to trample the enemies of Egypt, and appears as a king fowling and fishing in the marshes. The middle portico tells the tale of Hatchepsut's divine birth and coronation (northern side) and the story of the expedition to Punt (southern side). At each end of this portico is a chapel, the northern chapel being dedicated to Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, and the southern chapel, possibly the site of her original Deir el-Bahri shrine, being dedicated to Hathor.
    The uppermost level, the most important part of the temple, took the form of a hypostyle hall fronted by an Osiride portico with each of its twenty-four square-cut pillars faced by an imposing, twice life-sized, painted limestone Osiriform statue of Hatchepsut staring impassively outwards over the Nile Valley towards Karnak. These statues were matched by the ten Osiride statues which stood in the niches