Friday, December 12, 2008

Soooooo You Want Your Own Memorial Temple? ♥

How cool would it be to have your own memorial temple? People would remember you forever! Not only that, but in Ancient Egypt, they believed that if your memorial temple would stand for eternity, you would live for eternity in the afterlife. Now that would be pretty sweet right? Well, that's what Hatshepsut thought, but little did she know, her temple would be partially destroyed!! I'll get to that later though...
Hatshepsut's Memorial Temple is in a spot she hand-chose. It was totally up to her! It was designed to blend in with the scenery, and appear to be 'growing' out of the hillside! From the picture (above), it actually sort of appears to be that way! Talk about even cooler. ♥
In the gateway (which is a little bit hard to see from this picture), stand two statues of Hatshepsut dressed as Osiris, complete with a tight-fit cloak and her arms bent across her chest. Statues of me?? Now that would be amazing!
Though it was at first a glorious sight, inside and out, "Djeser Djeseru" (it's original name, which means 'holiest of the holy') suffered damage during Pharaoh Akhenaten's reign. Her name and various images of her and the gods (especially Osiris) were chiseled out then. He wanted to destroy memory of Hatshepsut, and did a decent job of it. Though (never fear!!) after his reign most of the images were restored and put back into her temple, except for (strangely) the images of her.
Today, Hatshepsut's Memorial Temple is in fair shape and is currently being restored to be opened up to the general public. I hope "Deir el-Bahri" (what it is known as today) opens soon - it would be really cool to see Hatshepsut's Memorial Temple and learn so much more about her! ♥

3 comments:

  1. wow you have so much voice!! you dont know me but still i love your blog!

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  2. Hey I really like the picture, and your paragraphs are so clear and interesting.

    O yea, and this is totally off the subject but I also love Twilight, the movie was great:):)

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  3. I like this picture it is really cool! So Hatshepsut had a thing for Osiris? Nefertiti liked Ra a lot and had similar things. Sorry, just reminded me of that. That was mean of Akhenaten to do, was it because of the religious reform? Anyway-cool picture. Oh wait...I said that. Okay, bye!

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