Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 1479 BCE at Deir el-Bahri. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
Hatshepsut’s terraces step into the Theban cliffs as if the mountain itself were a ramped offering to Amun.
How it was made
Senenmut’s design uses colonnades, myrrh-terrace reliefs of Punt, and a sanctuary cut into living rock.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
Later erasures of her name did not erase the architecture. It remains the most theatrical mortuary façade in Egypt.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 1479 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 15 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.