MTV Cribs: Egypt Edition

While celebrities and other mogul-types may build huge and ostentatious mansions these days and show them off on shows like MTV Cribs, the pharaohs and kings in Ancient Egypt built equally impressive temples and other burial sites in preparation for their afterlife.

The Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut was commissioned to be built by an architect for Queen Hatshepsut. It is located at Deir el-Bahri, which at the time was across the Nile from Thebes, the New Kingdom’s religious center (Stokstad, 60). A video briefing describing Hatshepsut and the funerary temple is provided below to give context to the period.

The video explains how the Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut was viewed as one of the most beautiful and modern buildings of the time due to the fact that it was not built in a pyramid style and the reversal of the scale relationship of temple-to-tomb. Typically in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, seen with the pyramids of Giza, the temple is much smaller than the tomb itself, which is not the case with the Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut, whose tomb was actually located quite a distance away (Stokstad, 60). A funerary temple’s primary purpose was for continuing worship of the deceased pharaoh, however, do to its beauty and size, the Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut was also used for funeral rites and commemorative ceremonies.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Hatshetsup-temple-1by7.jpg

The building itself is three stories high and connected by a series of ramps, with one processional ramp moving towards the center entry of the temple. On the top level, the colonnades, which are rows of columns, led to a hypostyle hall, which can be seen in the picture as the large open space surrounded by the many columns. It held the chapels dedicated to Hatshepsut, Tutmose I and the gods Amun and Ra-Horakhty (Stokstad, 60).

Other buildings constructed in Ancient Egypt  during this time started to show similarities in architectural forms. The Great Temple of Amun located at Karnak also contains a series of colonnades and hypostyle halls. The Great Temple of Amun at Karnak’s hypostyle hall is incredibly large and would have been used for sanctuary purposes and sometimes coronation ceremonies during this time.

https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/139/flashcards/1167139/jpg/amun_at_karnak1330495782441.jpg

https://ferrelljenkins.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/karnak_entrance_fjenkins011909_1130-800.jpg

Because this temple was built for the god Amun and contained his statue in the large courtyard, the architecture was very much built high towards the sky to be closer to the gods. There were 134 columns in the temple surrounding the hypostyle hall courtyard some of which were close to 30 feet tall (Stokstad, 65).Do to the respect the gods were given in Ancient Egypt, only kings and priests were allowed to enter the sanctuary. This reveals the strict hierarchy in Egypt’s culture at this time; only those of high status could interact with the gods at this level. The priests would wash, dress and offer meals to the statue of Amun every morning; a job revered by many (Stokstad, 65). Moreover, the architecture in Egypt during this time evolved away from the pyramid style for tombs in the Old Kingdom, to a more modern structure including colonnades and hypostyle halls in the New Kingdom.

Stokstad, Marilyn. Art: A Brief History. Fourth Edition. (Prentice-Hall, 2009). pp 60, 65.

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