page_title: Mentuhotep II
section_title: Front part of the temple
hierarchical_section_title: Mentuhotep II / Mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II / Architecture / Front part of the temple
caption_attribution_description: Restitution du temple de Montouhotep II à Deir el Bahari
context_page_description: Mentuhotep II, also known under his prenomen Nephepetre, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh circa 2061–2010 BCE, the sixth ruler of the Eleventh Dynasty. He is credited with reuniting Egypt, thus ending the turbulent First Intermediate Period and becoming the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom. He reigned for 51 years, according to the Turin King List. Mentuhotep II succeeded his father Intef III on the throne and was in turn succeeded by his son Mentuhotep III.
  Mentuhotep II ascended Egypt’s throne in the Upper Egyptian city of Thebes during the First Intermediate Period. Egypt was not unified during this time, and the Tenth Dynasty, rival to Mentuhotep’s Eleventh, ruled Lower Egypt from Herakleopolis. After the Herakleopoitan kings desecrated the sacred ancient royal necropolis of Abydos in Upper Egypt in the fourteenth year of Mentuhotep’s reign, the pharaoh dispatched his armies north to conquer Lower Egypt. Continuing his father Intef III’s conquests, Mentuhotep succeeded in unifying his country, probably shortly before his 39th year on the throne. Following and in recognition of the unification, in regnal year 39, he changed his titulary to Shematawy.
context_section_description: West of the causeway is the main temple, which consisted of two parts. The front part of the temple is dedicated to Monthu-Ra, a merger of the sun god Ra with the Theban god of war Monthu, particularly worshipped during the 11th Dynasty. 
  A ramp aligned with the central axis of the temple led to the upper terrace. The ramp that is visible today was constructed in 1905 by Édouard Naville over the remains of the original ramp, which only is visible in two places as the lowest two layers of the lateral limestone cladding.
  The eastern front part of the temple, on both sides of the rising ramp, consists of two porticos with a double row of rectangular pillars, which make the temple look like a saff tomb, the traditional burial of Mentuhotep II's 11th-Dynasty predecessors.
  On the temple terrace, a 60-metre-wide, 43-metre-deep and 5-metre-high podium supports the upper hall surrounding an ambulatory and the core building. The ambulatory, separated from the upper hall by a 5-cubit-thick wall, comprised a total of 140 octagonal columns disposed in three rows. For most of these columns, only the base is still visible today.
  The courtyard of the ambulatory was completely filled by the core building, a massive 22 m large and 11 m high construction. This edifice, located at the center of the temple complex, was excavated in 1904 and 1905 by Edouard Naville. He reconstructed it as a square structure topped by a small pyramid, a representation of the primeval mount which possibly resembled the superstructures of the royal tombs at Abydos. This reconstruction, supported by H. E. Winlock, was contested by D. Arnold, who argued that, for structural reasons, the temple could not have supported the weight of a small pyramid. Instead, he proposed that the edifice was flat-roofed.
caption: Reconstruction of Mentuhotep II's mortuary temple by Édouard Naville. The presence of a pyramid is debated.
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