Temple of Thutmose III

The temple of Thutmose III at Deir el-Bahari is a temple in the central part of the Deir el-Bahari Valley, built on a rocky platform and thus dominating over the earlier structures: the temple of Hatshepsut and the temple of Mentuhotep Nebhepetre of the Eleventh Dynasty.^[1] The temple was built in the last decade of Thutmose III’s rule, i.e., about 1435–1425 BC.^[2] It was destroyed, probably by an earthquake, at the beginning of the Twenty-first Dynasty. Fragments of walls covered with relief decoration were preserved.^[3] The building was presumably built on the neighboring terraced temples with pillared porticoes flanking the ramps leading to higher levels. It was called Djeser-akhet (“Holy of Horizon”).^[4] The remains of the temple of Thutmose III were uncovered in the years 1962–67.^[3] The excavations were initiated by Prof. Kazimierz Michałowski, then director of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw in Cairo (now the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw).^[5] Work was resumed in 1978 to reconstruct the decoration of the temple.^[3]