A rock shrine known as Speos Artemidos

 situated on the south side of an isolated wadi about 3km east of Beni Hasan.

The speos is a small temple hewn completely out of the rock, in an area where there are many ancient quarries.

Although the origins of the structure may go back as far as the Middle Kingdom, it was first decorated in the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the new kingdom.

It was dedicated to the goddess Pakhet , a local lion-headed goddess of the desert ,  who was given the title ‘She Who Scratches’. She is known as a night huntress but her cult is not attested in the area before the New Kingdom. Later the Greeks associated her with their own huntress Artemis, and the temple became known as the ‘Cave of Artemis’. Other titles attached to Pakhet at Speos Atemidos are ‘Goddess of the Mouth of the Wadi’ and ‘She Who Opens the Ways of the Stormy Rains’.

The modern name for the speos, Istabl Antar, comes from Antar, who was a local pre-Islamic poet, who was also known as a brave fighter.

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The façade of the speos is 15m wide with four square pillars cut from the rock, two on each side of the entrance. These had been prepared for decoration with Hathor-headed capitals on the outer face and Osiride capitals on the inner face, but remained unfinished,

 

it's building dates back to the old kingdom, and decorated by pharaohs of the newkingdom

like the queen hatshepsut who added the most important scenes , then Thutmoses 3rd damage most of them , seti 1st added some scenes and replaced some of  the figures and names of hatshepsut by his .

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The most important of these added by Hatshepsut on the architrave over the entrance and denounces the ‘Asiatics of Avaris’ (the Hyksos) who ruled Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. In the lengthy text the queen describes the chaos of Hyksos rule and extols the benefits of her own reign and her restoration of the damage they caused. It is possible that the Hyksos may have been used in the text as a metaphor for chaos and the sovereign’s duty which was to bring order to the land, since their expulsion happened three generations before Hatshepsut’s reign. The queen did, however, undertake the restoration of several monuments in Middle Egypt which had suffered under the rule of the Hyksos.
 
then Seti 1 infront of different gods and goddesses like Pakhet , sekhmet , hathor 
 
The ceiling is painted with vultures and cartouches of Seti I.

 

The sanctuary is mostly unfinished

There is also graffiti from the Pharaonic, Greek and Coptic eras. In the rear wall of the sanctuary a high niche would have been intended to contain a cult statue.

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Hatshepsut and her daughter Neferure are credited with the construction of another smaller rock-temple nearby, just to the right before reaching Speos Artemidos. This chapel, badly defaced during the reign of Tuthmose III, was also dedicated to Pakhet. Although left unfinished, it was later decorated during the reign of Alexander II. Its modern name is Speos Batn el-Bakarah.

 

The rock temples are surrounded by plundered burials of cats in a Late Period cemetery where animals were buried in honour of the goddess Pakhet. There are also many caves in the area which were inhabited by early Christians during the first millennium AD.