18 July 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Female pharaoh’s temple reveals teamwork of Egypt’s ‘ancient masters’

Despite the widely acknowledged monumentality and durability of ancient Egyptian sculpture, carved reliefs, and paintings the makers of these works remain mostly unknown.

For a long time, academics considered tomb and temple decorations as sources of knowledge about ancient Egyptian religious beliefs rather than works of art in their own right. Little is known about individual Egyptian artists and their methods. Textual evidence suggests the presence of sculptors and painters, but rarely provides specifics about their work or who they were.

In a new approach, archaeologists have revealed that Egyptian sculptors worked in teams rather than solo artisans.

Anastasiia Stupko-Lubczynska and colleagues from the University of Warsaw researched the temple of Hatshepsut, one of Egypt’s few female pharaohs who reigned from 1478 to 1458 B.C.E.

To better understand the work of decorating ancient temples, Anastasiia Stupko-Lubczynska, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw, and his colleagues studied the Temple of Hatshepsut.

Maat-Ka-Re Hatshepsut (XVIIIth Dynasty, circa 1479-1457 BC) was the daughter of Aa-kheper-ka-Re Thutmosis I, and the wife of Aa-kheper-en-Re Thutmosis II. She was the third woman in Egyptian history to take up the Pharaoh’s throne.

Queen Hatshepsut was a great builder sovereign, who showed evidence of outstanding originality. The temple of Deir el-Bahari is the most spectacular example of it.

Hatshepsut temple, which stretches 273 meters by 105 meters, was built almost 3500 years ago at Deir el-Bahari, near modern-day Luxor.

Stupko-Lubczynska was there as part of the University of Warsaw’s Polish-Egyptian expedition’s painstaking—and ongoing—effort to clean and restore the temple’s damaged walls.

Stupko-Lubczynska and a team of draftspeople spent hundreds of hours between 2006 and 2013 documenting the chapel walls by hand, copying the carvings on sheets of plastic film at a one-to-one scale.

Hatshepsut temple

During the procedure, the archaeologist discovered minute features in the chapel’s fragile limestone, such as awkward chisel strokes and subsequent adjustments.

“Because we have so many figures with repetitive details, we can compare the details and workmanship,” Stupko-Lubczynska says. “If you look at enough of them, it’s easy to see when someone was doing it properly.”

Some figures, she and her coworkers saw, were noticeably worse—legs and torsos with sloppily chiseled edges, or many chisels blows to sculpt wig curls that only required two or three precise strokes elsewhere.

Stupko-Lubczynska said today in Antiquity that the study showed the painting was a collaborative effort done in stages by different painters.

“Maybe the master artisans came in at the end to finish the figure.” With no natural light in the cavernous, windowless hall, there must have also been assistants holding oil lamps crowding onto the scaffolds.” she says.

As a result of the research, the process of creating Ancient Egyptian reliefs was well understood.

The examination of the procedures utilized and the sequencing of the acts necessary to manufacture an item is known as the chaîne opératoire in archaeology (operational sequence). The chaîne opératoire approach was applied to the wall reliefs in the Chapel of Hatshepsut, the largest room in the temple built for the eponymous female pharaoh.

To read the work

Related Articles

Mesolithic stone mace head found during excavation of a site near Buckingham

4 April 2023

4 April 2023

Archaeologists discovered an attractive Mesolithic stone mace head while excavation of a site near Buckingham. The work was done by...

Ancient skeletons buried with gold jewelry and expensive leather shoes found in newly discovered Roman necropolis in Italy

5 January 2024

5 January 2024

Archaeologists involved in a two-year-long excavation project at the site of a planned solar energy plant ancient city of Tarquinia,...

Archaeologists discovered the secret ingredient that made Mayan plaster durable

20 April 2023

20 April 2023

Ancient Mayan masons had their own secrets for making lime plasters, mortars, and plasters, which they used to build their...

Ancient Balkan genomes trace the rise and fall of the Roman Empire’s frontier, reveal Slavic migrations to southeastern Europe

7 January 2024

7 January 2024

The genomic history of the Balkan Peninsula during the first millennium of the common era—a period marked by significant changes...

Deadly 7.7 quakes hit Turkey destroys historical Gaziantep Castle

6 February 2023

6 February 2023

A deadly 7.7 magnitude earthquake that rocked the southern province of Kahramanmaraş, with tremors felt in the neighboring provinces, has...

China’s ancient water pipes show people mastered complex engineering 4,000 years ago without the need for a centralized state authority

16 August 2023

16 August 2023

A system of ancient ceramic water pipes, the oldest ever unearthed in China, shows that neolithic people were capable of...

Shackled skeleton identified as rare evidence of slavery found in Rutland

7 June 2021

7 June 2021

In Rutland, archaeologists discovered an ‘unusual’ skeleton of a Roman slave, who might have been a criminal sentenced to death....

6,500-Year-Old Hunting Kit Discovered in West Texas Cave

5 April 2025

5 April 2025

A remarkable archaeological find in the rugged terrain of West Texas is transforming our understanding of the region’s prehistoric inhabitants....

Drone photos reveal Venice of the Fertile Crescent

16 October 2022

16 October 2022

A drone survey of Lagash, a site located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, revealed that the 4,900-year-old settlement was...

The easternmost Roman aqueduct in Armenia was discovered

19 November 2021

19 November 2021

Archaeologists from the University of Münster and the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia have discovered remains...

Denisovans or Homo Sapiens: Who Were the First to Settle Permanently on the Tibetan Plateau?

8 December 2021

8 December 2021

The Tibetan Plateau has long been considered one of the last places to be populated by people in their migration...

A 4000-Year-Old Seal Found in the prehistoric coastal site of Kalba on the Gulf of Oman

5 April 2024

5 April 2024

Archaeologists discovered a Gulf-type seal made of soft stone dating to the end of the third millennium BC at Kalba,...

Archaeologist Reconstructs 2,000-Year-Old Roman Frescoes from Thousands of Fragments in ‘World’s Toughest Jigsaw’

19 June 2025

19 June 2025

What started as a pile of broken plaster fragments has become one of the most remarkable reconstruction projects in British...

Archaeologists discover the Americas’ oldest adobe architecture

7 December 2021

7 December 2021

On the north coast of Peru, researchers have discovered the oldest adobe architecture in the Americas, constructed with ancient mud...

2,000-Year-Old Unique Composite Fish Scaled Armor Found in Ancient Tomb

20 December 2024

20 December 2024

Chinese researchers have recently found fish-scaled armor in the tomb of Liu He, Marquis of Haihun from the Western Han...