'the monastery of Apa Phoibammon', Ancient Egyptian: djeser-djeseru)[1] is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt.

Mentuhotep II, the Eleventh Dynasty king who reunited Egypt at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, built a very unusual funerary complex.

The mortuary temple itself consists of a forecourt and entrance gate, enclosed by walls on three sides, and a terrace on which stands a large square structure that may represent the primeval mound that arose from the waters of chaos.

From the eastern part of the forecourt, an opening called the Bab el-Hosan ('Gate of the Horseman') leads to an underground passage and an unfinished tomb or cenotaph containing a seated statue of the king.

At the back of the forecourt and terrace are colonnades decorated in relief with boat processions, hunts, and scenes showing the king's military achievements.

The inner part of the temple was actually cut into the cliff and consists of a peristyle court, a hypostyle hall and an underground passage leading into the tomb itself.

The mastaba-like structure on the terrace is surrounded by a pillared ambulatory along the west wall, where the statue shrines and tombs of several royal wives and daughters were found.

Although little remained of the king's own burial, six sarcophagi were retrieved from the tombs of the royal ladies (Ashayet, Henhenet, Kawit, Kemsit, Muyet and Sadhe).

Beneath the court, a deep shaft was cut which led to unfinished rooms believed to have been intended originally as the king's tomb.

It is a colonnaded structure, which was designed and implemented by Senenmut, royal steward and architect of Hatshepsut, to serve for her posthumous worship and to honor the glory of Amun.

[citation needed] The unusual form of Hatshepsut's temple is explained by the choice of location, in the valley basin of Deir el-Bahari, surrounded by steep cliffs.

Hatshepsut employed a lengthy colonnaded terrace that deviated from the centralized massing of Mentuhotep's model – an anomaly that may be caused by the decentralized location of her burial chamber.

Each 'story' is articulated by a double colonnade of square piers, with the exception of the northwest corner of the central terrace, which employs Proto-Doric columns to house the chapel.

The temple includes an image, shown to the right, of Hatshepsut depicted as male pharaoh giving offerings to Horus, and to their left, an animal skin wound around a tall staff that is a symbol of the god Osiris.

A tomb (TT320) in a hidden recess in the cliffs to the south of the temples contained a cache of forty royal mummies, moved there from the Valley of the Kings.

In March 2020 archeologists from Warsaw University's Institute of Archaeology, led by Andrzej Niwiński, discovered a treasure chest and a wooden box dating back 3,500 years in the Egyptian site of Deir el-Bahari.