Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt maintains strong diplomatic and commercial links with Punt, Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Mycenaeans.
Hatshepsut, the first (and only) woman to rule Egypt as a pharaoh, has encouraged commercial expansion and sponsored a major building program.
She dies around 1458, having lost influence toward the end of her reign to her nephew Thutmose III.
The enormously wealthy and powerful Senemut, Hatshepsut’s chief advisor, minister of public works, architect, and possible lover, having risen from undistinguished origins through the priesthood of Amon to eventually hold about twenty different offices, dies around the same time.
"Great Nurse" (and perhaps father) to the royal princess Nefrure, Senemut was also the architect of Hatshepsut's obelisks at Karnak, her vast rock-cut mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, and worked at Thebes.
Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri is to serve for her posthumous worship and to honor the glory of Amun and the other gods
Constructed just north of the temple of Mentuhotep II, the ninety-seven-foot tall Djeser-Djeseru or "the Sublime of the Sublimes" is composed of two terraces surrounded by decorated colonnades; lush gardens front the entire edifice.
This colonnaded structure of perfect harmony is built nearly one thousand years before the Parthenon.
On the interior walls, a series of vividly detailed reliefs, now famous, includes scenes of Hatshepsut's trading expedition to the land of Punt, an incense-producing region on the Red Sea.
Senemut had two tombs constructed for him, one in the Tombs of the Nobles, and another near the temple at Deir el-Bahri, near Hatshepsut's mortuary temple
They will both be heavily vandalized during the reign of Thutmose III, perhaps during the latter's campaign to eradicate all trace of Hatshepsut's memory.
