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The architect of Deir el Bahri also made full use of the terrain and of the peculiarly brilliant Egyptian climate. The overhanging cliffs do not diminish the handiwork of man but support and frame it, and the contrast of strong shadow and sharp sunlight is deliberately made a part of the design.

Though this temple, which was named Djeser-djeseru (“holiest of holy places”) in Egyptian, was dedicated to Amon and other gods, its primary function was to serve the funerary cult of the king Hatshepsut. Her first tomb, when she was still queen, was high in the cliffs of the western desert. Howard Carter found it in 1916, or, to be more accurate, he followed a group of would-be robbers who had found the tomb first and were busy at work inside when Carter arrived. Since the only access was via a rope from the clifftop above, Carter had the fellows right where he wanted them. He threatened to cut the rope and leave them stranded unless they came out with their hands up. Being sensible men, they did. Anyhow, they had wasted their time; the tomb was empty except for a handsome but unwieldy sarcophagus.

Presumably work on this tomb stopped when Hatshepsut proclaimed herself king. Her second tomb is one of the most extraordinary in the Valley of the Kings. It may have been the one Ineni constructed for his master—opinions differ on this. If it was, Hatshepsut, who liked to emphasize her relationship to her father, decided to have herself buried with him and began enlarging it. The seven-hundred-foot-long corridor wriggles around, but its general direction is in a line toward the temple at Deir el Bahri. Perhaps the original intention had been to drive the corridors straight under the mountain ridge so that the burial chamber would lie directly below the temple. The poor quality of the rock and the sheer dimensions of the tomb may have frustrated this intent; working in those airless lightless depths must have taken a toll on the workers. Few modern excavators have had the gumption to follow in their footsteps. One was Howard Carter, who got, for his pains, only the two sarcophagi from the burial chamber. One was Hatshepsut’s; the other, originally made for her, had been reinscribed for Thutmose I. He wasn’t there, and neither was she.

It is believed by some that Thutmose was removed by his grandson from the contaminating presence of Hatshepsut and reinstalled in another tomb in the Valley of the Kings—number 38, which contains fragmentary objects inscribed with his name. Formerly scholars thought KV38 was Ineni’s tomb, so to speak, the original sepulchre of Thutmose I. The revisionists base their theory on the fact that KV38 is simpler in plan than Thutmose III’s tomb, so it must be earlier in date. Maybe they’re right, although I am always skeptical of dating based on typological sequence. But if Thutmose I originally occupied KV38, then Hatshepsut moved him to KV20 and then Thutmose III put him back in KV38.

Anyhow, Hatshepsut’s father wasn’t in KV38 either. Tomb robbers had gotten to him, as they did to most of the other royals. One of the mummies from the royal cache was thought to be his, but of Hatshepsut the only certain trace is a mummified spleen, from the same cache. People are still looking for her, most recently in the tomb of her nurse, which contained two female mummies. One of them may be Hatshepsut’s. Another potential candidate is an unidentified mummy found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, along with the bodies of other monarchs rescued from their desecrated sepulchres. The techniques of mummification suit the period, and the investigators described the body as that of an “elderly woman.” (I take leave to resent the adjective; the lady was probably between thirty-five and forty-five when she died.) This same mummy has been identified as Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III, and as Nefertiti.

Or it could be somebody else.

There was a tomb under the sanctuary of the temple of Djeser djeseru. It was the tomb of the commoner, Senenmut,