We drove just over a mile south of the Bani Hasan tombs to a temple constructed by Hatshepsut and dedicated to Pakhet that was cut into the cliff rock.

The lioness headed neterit (goddess), Pakhet appeared during the Middle Kingdom. Pakhet's character lay somewhere between the later gentleness of Bast (house cat) and the ferocity of Sekhmet (lioness).

Hatshepsut built an architrave bearing a long dedicatory text with her famous denunciation of the Hyksos, the foreign tribes that had recently been overthrown.

The front of the temple within the pillared area is covered in art and glyphs, but when we went into the inner grotto, all of the artwork had been chiseled off the walls.

The Greeks, who later occupied Egypt for three hundred years, attempted to align the Egyptian deities with their own. Pakhet’s hunting nature led them to identify her with Artemis. To the Greeks this temple was called Speos Artemidos (Grotto of Artemis).