17 June 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

Archaeologists in Peru discover a mummy tied with 800-year-old ropes

28 November 2021

28 November 2021

On Peru’s central coast, archaeologists discovered a mummy estimated to be at least 800 years old. The mummy’s body was...

History, geography, and evolution are rewrites thanks to an incredible dinosaur trove discovered in Italy

2 December 2021

2 December 2021

A dinosaur trove in Italy rewrites the history, geography, and evolution of the ancient Mediterranean area. Italy is not exactly...

Ancient stone grenades discovered at Badaling Great Wall in Beijing

16 October 2023

16 October 2023

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed 59 ancient stone grenades from the ruins of a building in the western section of the...

Ancient necropolis of stillborn babies and very young children found in Auxerre, France

8 June 2024

8 June 2024

A team from INRAP, France’s national archaeology and preservation agency, unearthed a necropolis dedicated to stillborn and very young children...

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a stone circle in the Castilly Henge, located in Cornwall, England

20 May 2022

20 May 2022

Archaeologists have unearthed a mysterious stone circle at the center of a prehistoric ritual site near Bodmin in Cornwall, located...

4,500-Year-Old Three Warrior Graves Found in Germany, One Still Wearing an Arm Guard

30 January 2025

30 January 2025

Extraordinary discovery during the construction of a New Power Line: Archaeologists unearth a cemetery from the Copper Age with Three...

Chinese Paleontologists discovered a 170-million-year-old flower

29 March 2023

29 March 2023

Chinese paleontologists discovered fossils of an ancient plant dating back approximately 170 million years. The Chinese Academy of Sciences Nanjing...

Flint tools found in Tunel Wielki Cave, Poland, about half a million years old

9 October 2022

9 October 2022

Flint tools discovered over 50 years ago in the Tunel Wielki Cave (Maopolskie region) are not tens of thousands of...

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...

Two statuettes of Demeter discovered in Aigai, the ‘city of goats’ of the Aeolians in western Türkiye

20 November 2023

20 November 2023

Two statuettes of Demeter, the Greek goddess of earth and fertility, were discovered in a cistern in the ancient city...

In French Necropolis 21 Roman “curse tablets” discovered including one written in the extinct Celtic language of Gaulish

18 January 2025

18 January 2025

During the excavation of an eighteenth-century hospital in north-western France by researchers from the Orléans Archaeological Service, a 2,000-year-old necropolis...

Czech experimental archaeologists successfully completed their 1-month voyage in the Aegean Sea using a replica of a prehistoric vessel

17 July 2023

17 July 2023

Radomír Tichý, an archeology professor at the University of Hradec Králové who is also the director of the Všestary Archeopark,...

Amateur divers discover ‘enormously valuable’ hoard of Roman coins

27 September 2021

27 September 2021

Two amateur free divers have found one of the largest collections of Roman coins in Europe off the east coast of Spain. Luis Lens...

Archaeologists Uncovered a Unique Ancient Roman Winery with Marble Tiling and Fountains of Grape Juice

17 April 2023

17 April 2023

Archaeologists have uncovered a unique ancient Roman winery at the luxurious Villa of the Quintilii, just to the south of...

1,400-year-old temple from the time of the East Anglian Kings discovered at Suffolk royal settlement

21 November 2023

21 November 2023

Archaeologists have uncovered a possibly pre-Christian temple from the time of the East Anglian Kings at Rendlesham, near Sutton Hoo...