Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel
The Red Chapel of Hatshepsut (often called the Chapelle Rouge) is a small temple constructed of red quartzite, known as a “barque shrine”, built to house the sacred ritual boat of the god Amun of Karnak, which was used during his great festival processions. These shrines acted as resting stations for the divine barque when it was carried out from the main temple, allowing ceremonies and offerings to be performed along the route.
After her death, Thutmose III dismantled much of the chapel and reused its blocks in the Third Pylon at Karnak. In the 20th century, archaeologists reconstructed the chapel at Karnak using the surviving blocks, allowing us to see much of its decoration again.
Erected within the precinct of Amun at Karnak, the largest religious complex in Ancient Egypt, the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut was not secluded; rather, it was part of a sacred urban landscape of pylons, courts, shrines, and processional routes. At around 18 metres long and 6 metres wide, the chapel was divided into three chambers, with a central sanctuary for the barque. It was not large compared to Karnak’s sprawling pylons, but it was very finely crafted.
Built of red quartzite (with black granite/diorite for doorways), which gave it a striking visual contrast against the pale sandstone and limestone of Karnak. The stone was left polished and gleaming, though there is some evidence that details of the reliefs may have been painted, as was common across temple reliefs. The roof was made of heavy flat quartzite slabs, supported by stone architraves. Likely not visible from afar as a soaring structure, but it would have had a commanding “jewel-box” presence in the temple precinct, akin to a side chapel in a cathedral complex, not hidden away, but part of the bustling ceremonial heart of Thebes.
The purpose of the Red Chapel was to house Amun’s barque shrine during festival processions (esp. the Opet Festival). The divine bark was carried out of the main temple, rested in these stations, and received offerings. Outside festival season, it would still have been treated as a consecrated space. Priests probably cleaned and maintained it ritually, perhaps offering incense and libations daily, as the barque itself (a portable naos with Amun’s image inside) was never considered an ordinary object.
Like the Biblical Tabernacle, the barque was a portable manifestation of the divine, and its housing was treated with awe, priests would maintain its glory by ritually purifying, anointing, and guarding the barque. And so, the Red Chapel was not merely a storage space, but a small functional shrine in its own right, integrated into the daily sacred landscape of Karnak.
The walls of the Red Chapel read like a storybook of divine kingship. Here we find tales of Hatshepsut’s wondrous Divine Birth and her radiant Coronation, with Amun himself cast as her father and the gods placing crowns upon her brow, sealing her right to rule. Scenes of ritual ablutions, solemn offerings, and sacred festivals dance across the quartzite blocks, each image a thread in her tapestry of legitimacy. Especially radiant are the scenes of the Opet Festival, when Amun’s barque set forth from Karnak, borne in majesty to Luxor Temple, a voyage that renewed the king, the land, and the very order of the cosmos itself. . Far from being worldly diversions, the music and movement were themselves sacred gifts, poured forth to gladden the heart of the gods, as potent as the smoke of incense or the taste of libations.
The Red Chapel’s splendour was not to shine unbroken. Long after Hatshepsut had gone to her rest, Thutmose III (her co-ruler turned successor) turned his hand against her monuments. Whether out of politics, piety, or the uneasy memory of a woman upon the throne, he ordered the chapel’s red quartzite blocks dismantled. Its gleaming walls, once adorned with the story of her divine birth and her embrace by Amun, were pulled down and carried off. Piece by piece they were folded into the masonry of his own pylon, hidden like precious gemstones sealed inside a coffer. The chapel, that jewel-box of kingship, seemed lost to time, its voice silenced beneath new stone.
Centuries slipped away before its whisper was heard again. In the twentieth century, archaeologists prised open the walls of Karnak’s later pylons and there, to their wonder, found the scattered blocks of Hatshepsut’s shrine; each one still alive with crisp reliefs of gods, dancers, and festivals. With patience and care, the fragments were gathered, studied, and reassembled like a grand puzzle. Today the Red Chapel stands once more in Karnak, not in its original completeness but reborn, a phoenix of quartzite. Its reliefs again catch the light of the Theban sun, telling afresh the story of a queen who dared to be king, and of the long road her chapel took through ruin, silence, and resurrection.
When Thutmose III dismantled Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel, he wasn’t just erasing her memory; he was also clearing prime real estate inside Karnak. The Red Chapel had stood on the central axis of the temple precinct, the very ceremonial route Amun’s barque took during processions. Later in his reign, Thutmose III built his own Akhmenu (“Festival Hall”) in that same area. This building was monumental in scale and functioned as a “jubilee hall” where he could celebrate his Sed-festivals, immortalise his military triumphs, and showcase his devotion to Amun. By removing Hatshepsut’s jewel-box chapel and replacing it with his own much larger monument, Thutmose III reclaimed the sacred axis of Karnak for himself. It appears that Thutmose III may have wanted to stamp his own authority on the sacred landscape of Karnak, ensuring that festival processions and the eyes of Thebes would encounter his monuments, not hers.
