Senenmut

Senenmut (or Senmut) held the titles of 'Overseer of the Gardens of Amun', 'Steward of Amun', 'Overseer of all Royal Works' and 'Tutor to the Royal Heiress Neferure'. His dates are uncertain but he advised Queen Hatshepsut on many topics and is generally credited with the design of her mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri (Djeser-Djeseru). He may also have been the father of her daughter. One of Senenmut's two tombs, found empty, is within its precincts. Senenmut does not proclaim himself a designer but his tomb has the earliest astronomical ceiling. He was born into a non-royal upper-class family, which lived some fifteen miles south of Thebes, and trained as a scribe and administrator. He was buried in a shrine at Gebel Silsila, north of Aswan, in which his statue is cut from the living rock. Over 25 other statues of the man described as 'greatest of the great' survive. They show him holding Neferure, or kneeling for an act of worship with outstretched arms. Without evidence, it has long been suggested that he was Hatshepsut's lover. The influence of Hatshepsut's temple garden is undocumented but as Gothein wrote 'Here stands out for the very first time in the history of art a most magnificent idea - that of building three terraces, one above the other, each of their bordering walls set against the mountain-side, and made beautiful with pillared corridors, the actual shrine in a cavity in the highest terrace which was blasted out of the rock'. [See Gothein on Egyptian gardens]