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Offering scenes in the Chapels of the Royal Cult Complex in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari
Main project:
Complex of the Royal Cult Reconstruction Project
Subproject:
Offering scenes in the Chapels of the Royal Cult Complex in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari
The objective of the research project is to provide documentation, theoretic reconstruction and substantial study of the reliefs, which decorate the walls of two chapels in the Royal Cult Complex, located on the third terrace of the Hatshepsut Temple at Deir el-Bahari. The project shall cover complex scenes of the offering table depicted on the southern and northern wall of the Hatshepsut Chapel, slaughter scenes located on its eastern wall, as well as the frieses of offerings on the southern, northern and eastern wall of the adjacent Chapel of Thutmosis I. These representations are one of the best preserved examples of the royal offering scenes, the canon of which was established during the Vth Dynasty.
The study on the reliefs covered by the project shall be divided into two stages: completion and processing their drawing documentation and formal and substantial analysis of these representations. The research is focused particularly on the differences noticed in the offering 
scenes of the Hatshepsut Temple compared to their “canonical” form from the earlier periods.
The applied documentation method consists in redrawing directly from the original material. Next the drawings are scanned and processed in the vectorial system by using the CorelDraw programme. The completion of the documentation of the reliefs preserved in situ shall be the redrawings of the decorated blocks coming from the destroyed parts of the walls of the two chambers, which are stored in lapidaria of the Hatshepsut Temple and museum collections.
The elaboration of the drawing documentation, made as a result of the project, will be the plates prepared for publishing (printing), which along with the substantial study will be included in the English version of the monograph on the Royal Cult Complex of the Hatshepsut Temple.
The plates prepared for the publication, containing the theoretical reconstruction of the unpreserved in situ parts of the walls of both Chapels, will make at the same time the project of the reconstruction, using the original decorated blocks stored in the area of the Temple. Ascertainment the original localization of the blocks during the study will enable in further perspective to place this material in its original context.
Bibliography:
Stupko, A., Cranes in the Chapel of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Study on Representations, EtudTrav XXIII (2010), pp. 157-178.
Stupko-Lubczyńska, A., Inscribed Vessels Represented in the Chapel of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari?, EtudTrav XXVII (2014), pp. 405-420 ♦
Project supervisor: Anastasiia Stupko-Lubczyńska
Documentalists: Maria Mathia, Grażyna Zborowska, Paul Barford, Mariusz Caban
Contact: anastazjastupko@wp.pl
Project financed by National Centre of Science, agreement no. DEC-2012/05/D/HS3/03680.
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