Deir el-Bahri occupies a striking bay in the cliffs of the Theban west bank, across the Nile from the temple landscape of Karnak. Its Arabic name means the northern monastery and belongs to a much later phase of the site's history. The ancient monuments within the bay had their own names and purposes. In particular, Djeser-Djeseru is the name of Hatshepsut's temple, not a separate ancient name for the whole of Deir el-Bahri. Keeping that distinction makes it easier to understand a landscape used by several rulers and later communities.

The major royal building tradition here began with Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty, the king associated with Egypt's reunification after the First Intermediate Period. His funerary complex combined a causeway, courtyards, terraces, colonnades and the royal burial within the landscape of the cliffs. The appearance of its central superstructure remains debated, so reconstructions showing a pyramid should not be treated as settled fact. The building brought royal commemoration, burial and divine worship into a carefully arranged setting that later rulers could recognise and reinterpret.

In the Eighteenth Dynasty, Hatshepsut built Djeser-Djeseru beside the older complex. Daughter of Thutmose I and wife of Thutmose II, she first acted as regent for Thutmose III before taking the full role of king. Her temple rose through three terraces connected by ramps, with colonnades extending across the cliff-backed setting. Senenmut, a leading official closely associated with her building programme, is traditionally credited with a major role in its design. Speculation about a romantic relationship between them is not necessary to explain either his importance or the temple's achievement.

Djeser-Djeseru was more than a memorial to one ruler. Its spaces honoured Hatshepsut and her father and accommodated the worship of deities including Hathor, Anubis and Amun-Ra. Hathor's association with the western cliffs and the reception of the dead gave the setting particular religious significance. The Beautiful Festival of the Valley brought the sacred barque of Amun from the east bank to the west-bank temple landscape. Procession, architecture and the remembrance of the dead therefore worked together, connecting the living community with royal and divine ancestors.

The temple's reliefs presented Hatshepsut's kingship as legitimate and divinely supported. Scenes of her divine birth placed her within the authority of the gods, while the Punt reliefs recorded a distant trading expedition. They show ships, foreign people, valuable products and trees brought back to Egypt. These scenes are historical evidence, but they are also carefully composed royal statements. Their purpose was not simply to describe a journey: they demonstrated that the king could obtain desirable goods and fulfil obligations to the gods. They remain an unusually detailed visual source for Egyptian contact with Punt.

Thutmose III also built a temple at Deir el-Bahri, known as Djeser-Akhet, adding another royal monument to the bay. His reign also saw the later removal or replacement of many representations of Hatshepsut as king. The surviving alterations require careful interpretation; they do not give direct access to a ruler's private motives. The continued use of the site shows that changes to royal memory did not end its religious importance.

Long after the great temples were built, the surrounding tombs became places of protection for older burials. During the Twenty-First Dynasty, priests reburied royal mummies threatened by tomb robbery. The cache usually called DB320 or TT320 lay in a cliff tomb near Deir el-Bahri, not beneath the floors of Hatshepsut's temple. It became known to the antiquities authorities in 1881 and contained rulers including Ramesses II, whose body had been moved from his original burial. This history should not be confused with claims about the identification of Hatshepsut's mummy, which involve a different tomb, KV60.

A Christian phase later gave the site its modern name. The monastery of St Phoibammon was established on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut's temple around the end of the sixth century CE. Its remains belong to a new use of an older sacred setting, not to the original royal construction. Archaeologists have consequently had to study several histories at once: the temples of different pharaohs, later burials, Christian occupation and modern excavation. Deir el-Bahri is a layered landscape rather than a single building frozen at one moment in time.