Thousands of tourists visit the Temple of Hatshepsut every day, enjoying the restored terraces that nestle under the cliffs of Deir el-Bahri on the West Bank of Luxor. Beside the Hatshepsut Temple is the ruined Temple of Mentuhotep II from the much earlier Eleventh Dynasty. But today this wonderful monument is closed to the public, and, although it is still possible to view part of the remains, it is all but ignored by the stream of visitors to its more famous neighbour.
The Great Reunifier
Mentuhotep II is remembered as one of Egypt’s great pharaohs – the founder of the Middle Kingdom. At the end of the Old Kingdom, central authority broke down and the country entered a period of uncertainty that we now call the First Intermediate Period (c.2181-2055 BC). Two power centres fought to re-establish control over Egypt: one based at Herakleopolis in the North and the other based at Thebes (Luxor) in the South. It was Thebes that emerged victorious under Mentuhotep, who reunified the country, ushering in a period of prosperity.
Mentuhotep’s predecessors at Thebes (Intef I, II, and III) had built their tombs at el-Tarif to the north of Deir el-Bahri. The great bay of cliffs at Deir el-Bahri had always been sacred to Hathor, but Mentuhotep seems to have been the first to build there. He combined aspects of the southern style of architecture (the rows of columns seen in the saff tombs of the Intefs) with aspects of the northern style of architecture (as seen in the traditional Old Kingdom pyramid complexes) to produce a tomb-temple with a genuinely original design. More than 500 years later, Hatshepsut adopted and expanded this design when she built her famous temple beside that of Mentuhotep, while Thutmose III managed to insert a third temple between them.
