AP® Art History · Unit 2 · Topic 2.2
Hatshepsut's Terraces and Axial Planning
Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri stacks three colonnaded terraces along one long central axis, using ramps and a sheer cliff backdrop to pull the eye upward and borrow the cliff's monumental scale.
A temple built on open flat ground has nothing to measure itself against but its own walls. Cut one into a cliff instead, and the cliff becomes part of the building's scale. Hatshepsut's architect Senenmut set her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri directly against limestone cliffs near the Valley of the Kings, so every terrace reads against that towering rock face. The result feels vast even though the built stone itself is modest.
The plan works on a single axis. From the valley floor, a long causeway runs straight at the cliff, climbing through three stacked terraces linked by ramps, each one set back and slightly higher than the last. Colonnades frame each level, their verticals echoing the natural vertical striations scored into the cliff face behind them, so the architecture and the rock seem to grow out of each other. By the time a visitor reaches the uppermost terrace, the path has narrowed and risen into a sanctuary cut straight into the living rock, the axis ending inside the mountain itself.
That sanctuary is not Hatshepsut's grave. Egyptian mortuary temples held the ongoing offering cult, priests performing rituals and bringing food and gifts for the dead ruler's spirit, for generations after her death. Her actual mummified body was sealed in a separate, hidden tomb dug deep into the Valley of the Kings, kept apart precisely so robbers could not connect a visible monument to a vulnerable burial. Axial planning and terracing reappear across Egyptian and later Mediterranean architecture wherever a builder wants to stage a slow, directed approach toward something sacred.
Key terms
- Axial planning
- Organizing a building along one straight central line of approach that directs movement toward a focal point.
- Mortuary temple
- A structure built for offerings and rituals honoring a dead ruler, separate from the ruler's actual burial site.
- Terrace
- A level, raised platform; here, one of three stacked horizontal levels forming the temple's rising structure.
- Colonnade
- A row of evenly spaced columns, used here to frame each terrace and echo the cliff's vertical lines.
- Causeway
- A raised, straight pathway connecting the valley entrance to the temple terraces along its central axis.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow do three stacked terraces and one long ramp pull your eye from the valley up to the sanctuary?
- Worked exampleShow me Hatshepsut's mortuary temple in section, from the causeway up into the rock cut shrine.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a mortuary temple the same building as the tomb it belongs to?
- Going furtherWhat changes about the silhouette when a colonnade repeats the vertical striping of the cliff behind it?
Check yourself
End of topic.