Why did hatshepsut build hatshepsut's temple?

Answer 1

Answer

Hatshepsut's temple is unique to Egypt. It is quite unlike any other Egyptian temple. It's walls tell the account of Hatshepsut's voyage to "Punt". The only other account we have from ancient Egypt of an African queen visiting a foreign country is The Bible's record about the queen who sheba'd "Ophir" (Auphirah or Africa). In Hebrew, to sheba means to rule and administer.

Hence the Queen "Sheba", as most translations of the Bible name her, who visited Solomon the builder of another unique temple in Jerusalem, looks to be the same one who built Hatshepsut's temple.

Decoding the meaning of "Hatshepsut" we find that it means "The Sign of the ruler/administrator of the South". In the Bible, the "South" refers to Africa as the "East" refers to Babylon and the "North" refers to Assyria or other empires north of Israel. The temple Hatshepsut built thus seems to be a copy of Solomon's. We know that in Song of Solomon the woman in the poem is described as black (i.e., African) and her hair like pharaoh's horses (presumably the hair of their mane). Solomon writes (SoS 2:14), "Oh my dove, you are in the clefts of the rock in the secret places of the stairs." Hatshepsut's temple sits against a cleft-filled cliff-face with secret enigmatic tunnels drilled into the cliff-face and with stairs leading up to the 'Djeser Djeseru" or Holy of Holies which was a secret place reserved for the high priest. This is so unlike standard Egyptian temples that a foreign temple must be the prototype and that would ony be Solomon's. "Punt means the bridge land. Amenhotep III said "When I look to the sunrise, I come to the countries of Punt" and that would be the lands on the other side of the Sinai peninsula (the bridge between Africa and Eurasia) i.e., Israel and Lebanon.

Thus Hatshepsut built this temple to show that she had travelled to Jerusalem, met Solomon and returned to Egypt having converted to worship Solomon's God (Jehovah). Political reality in Egypt meant that she had to decorate the temple with pagan regalia so she set the temple into its current setting in Deir el-Bahari, Egypt, near the valley of the kings, in this fashion as a clue that she was the fabled "Queen of Sheba". In that way she confounded her enemies and effectively managed to tell her history after all. Unfortunately, modern Egyptologists have their chronologies wrong so that Hatshepsut appears to be a 15th century BC (circa 1450 BC) queen rather than a 10th century BC (circa 950 BC) queen. Thus modern Egyptologists have nearly succeeded where her successor (Thutmose III) failed. Fortunately, not everyone has been fooled by the Egyptologists.