Hatshepsut: Tickets, Hours and How to Visit
Hatshepsut’s Temple, cut into the cliffs at Deir el-Bahari on Luxor’s West Bank, is the one site worth showing up early for. Do it before 8am or don’t bother: the limestone amphitheater it sits inside turns into a reflector oven by mid-morning, and the Valley of the Kings tour buses start dropping crowds off the connecting road by 9:30. Get there at opening and you’ll have the three-tiered colonnade close to yourself.
Key facts
| Price | EGP 440 foreign adult / EGP 220 student, card only |
| Hours | roughly 6am-5pm |
| Time needed | 60-90 minutes |
| Booking | walk-up ticket, no advance booking, pair it with a Valley of the Kings tour the same morning |
A packaged West Bank tour on GetYourGuide bundles Hatshepsut with the Valley of the Kings and a driver, worth it if you’d rather not negotiate a taxi cold at the ferry landing.
Why this temple, not Karnak or Luxor Temple
Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as pharaoh, not regent, for roughly two decades, one of very few women to hold the title outright, and her mortuary temple is the architectural argument for how seriously she took the job. Instead of another pylon-and-column complex, her architects built three long colonnaded terraces rising up the cliff face in a straight axis, a design with no real match anywhere else in Egypt. Reliefs inside record a trading expedition to the land of Punt, and you can still see where her successor Thutmose III had her images and cartouches hacked out decades later, a genuine ancient grudge carved into the stone.
Is Hatshepsut’s Temple worth the extra stop after the Valley of the Kings? Yes, and it’s a fundamentally different visit: the Valley of the Kings puts you underground in painted tombs, while Hatshepsut is an open-air, sun-exposed walk up wide terraces with long sightlines back across the West Bank fields to the Nile. Most West Bank half-day routes already loop past it between the Valley of the Kings and the Colossi of Memnon, so skipping it means a wasted detour, not saved time.
Getting there and what to bring
The temple sits on the standard West Bank loop, reachable by taxi, organized tour, or bicycle from the ferry landing (bike rental runs roughly EGP 10-20/day, workable October through February, miserable in summer heat). Closed-toe shoes matter here more than anywhere else on the West Bank: the terraces and approach path are uneven, dusty, and fully exposed with zero shade. Cash isn’t accepted at the ticket gate in 2026, bring a working Visa or Mastercard, confirm current pricing on Explore Luxor or the official monuments site before you go.
Does the Luxor Pass cover Hatshepsut? Yes, both the $130 Standard and $250 Premium Luxor Pass include Hatshepsut’s Temple, unlike Seti I’s tomb and Nefertari’s tomb, which both passes exclude by name. Whether the pass itself is worth buying depends on how many other sites you’re stacking into your trip, our Luxor guide runs the actual math.
The practical verdict
Go at opening, bring water and a hat, and budget 60-90 minutes, not a rushed 20-minute photo stop. Pair it with the Colossi of Memnon on the way in, both sit on the same stretch of road, and save Medinet Habu for later in the day once the direct sun has eased off the open terraces. If you’re building out a full West Bank day, our 2-day Luxor itinerary sequences Hatshepsut, the Valley of the Kings, and the Colossi of Memnon into a single realistic morning.