Nebhepetra Mentuhotep II (c.2055-2004 BC) was the founder of the Middle Kingdom, ruling from Thebes during the Eleventh Dynasty. His innovative funerary complex was the first to be built at Deir el-Bahri, and was the model for the later temples of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut. Sadly, as Geoffrey Lenox-Smith accurately pointed out in AE 136, Mentuhotep’s complex nowadays lies almost unnoticed. Nevertheless, this monument deserves attention, not least because its walls were once beautifully decorated with scenes carved in relief. Unfortunately, only fragments from these decorated walls are currently preserved. It is these fragments that form the dataset of my ongoing PhD research at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. I am using these pieces to study this king’s important artistic, political, societal, and religious innovations, all of which would become part of the ancient Egyptian canon for the next 2,000 years.
The temple complex
Mentuhotep’s complex can be divided architecturally into several parts, and seems to have undergone about four major phases of construction. One would have first entered a large courtyard, stretching out in front of the main building, which featured a garden with trees and seated statues of the king. This main building was on a platform and comprised multiple pillared halls, with two of them surrounding a solid square structure. The shape and function of this has not yet been conclusively explained. Several opinions have been put forward in the past 120 years, reconstructing it as either a pyramid or a mastaba. Other scholars, however, have argued that it perhaps featured a solar altar, flanked by either one or two obelisks, or even an earthen mound representing the mythological primeval mound.
The western part of the complex consisted of a court containing the shafts to the supposed royal tomb of Mentuhotep II, and to the tombs of a number of Hathor priestesses who lived during his reign. Last, another hall, featuring octagonal columns, contained a sanctuary seemingly dedicated to both the king Mentuhotep and the god Amun.
Mobility in mortuary contexts