The Temple of Hatshepsut

Lore & Background

In the Cooper Gang's ledger of targets, the Temple of Hatshepsut stands as a job that was never meant to be a one-man operation. The artifact at the temple's heart—pulled from a sealed inner sanctum by a rival crew—demanded that Sly, Bentley, and the rest of the gang work in concert: Bentley decoding the mechanism that holds the prize, Murray providing the brawling cover while Wrench handles the tech, and Sly threading the needle through guard patrols and collapsing floor tiles.

The temple itself is a study in layered architecture. The outer courtyards are open and sun-baked, giving way to the hypostyle hall where columns rise like a forest of carved stone, and finally to the narrow, torch-lit corridors that spiral upward toward the vault. Each stratum introduces a new environmental hazard—shifting sand that buries lower paths, crumbling ledges that give way under weight, and the ever-present threat of a guard's lantern cutting a cone of light across the dark.

The job's emotional core, as with most Sly Cooper heists, is less about the artifact and more about the crew pulling off something impossible together. Bentley's quiet confidence, Murray's oblivious strength, and Sly's reckless charm are all tested by a space that was built to keep people out—and the temple, in its own ancient way, keeps trying.

In Their Own Story

The sand was already shifting when Bentley called out from the base of the column. "Sly, the floor's not where it was thirty seconds ago."

Sly crouched on a lintel, earbuds in, watching a guard's torch sweep the hypostyle hall in slow arcs. Below, Murray was pretending to be a statue. He was doing a terrible job of it; his tail twitched every four seconds like a metronome.

"Bentley, the mechanism?"

"Give me two minutes. The lock is Egyptian, which means it's a puzzle with a grudge."

Wrench's voice crackled: "I'm on the upper walkway. There's a Wrench in a niche behind the second pylon. Also, Murray is breathing really loud."

Murray stopped breathing. Then started again.

Sly dropped, rolled, and was gone before the torch finished its arc. The vault was closer than it looked. The temple groaned around him, sand pouring from a crack in the ceiling like slow rain, and for a moment the whole structure felt less like a building and more like a sleeping animal deciding whether to wake up.

He grabbed the artifact. The temple did not wake up.

"Bentley, we're clear."

"Copy that. Also, the lock is solved. It was a riddle. The answer was 'sandwich.' I don't know why."

Sly grinned. "Classic."

They were in the air before the last grain of sand hit the floor.

Reader's Guide

The Temple of Hatshepsut opens in a sun-bleached outer courtyard where colossal papyrus-topped columns frame the entrance. The palette is warm ochre and sand, broken by the deep blue of painted relief panels depicting processional scenes. Torches in bronze sconces cast long, flickering shadows that double as visual cues for guard patrol lines—stay in the dark, move in the light.

The hypostyle hall is the level's vertical heart. Columns rise in dense rows, and the platforming here is about reading the architecture: ledges between capitals, a broken staircase that forces a wall-run, and a sand-filled trench that slowly rises to block a lower route, pushing you to the upper walkway. Wrenches are tucked in hard-to-reach niches behind papyrus reliefs and on the very tops of broken columns. Coconuts hide in the sand trenches and behind the thickest pillars where Murray's bulk can't follow.

The inner sanctum is tighter, torch-lit, and lit by a single shaft of daylight from a cracked ceiling. The heist target sits on a raised dais behind a mechanism Bentley must decode while Sly deals with the final guard rotation. A crumbling floor section here requires precise timing—step on the wrong tile and the whole platform drops, sending you back to the hall.

Bentley's Notes are scattered in the less obvious spots: behind a false wall panel in the courtyard, on a high ledge in the hall reachable only via a chain, and in a small side chamber off the sanctum that most players walk past. The overall feel is one of ancient grandeur pressed up against the frantic, comedic energy of a raccoon gang pulling a job in a building that predates them by three millennia.

Did You Know?

• The temple's visual design draws on New Kingdom Egyptian architecture, including hypostyle halls and papyrus-topped columns, giving it a distinctly different feel from the franchise's more common urban heist settings.
• The standard Sly Cooper collectible trio—Wrenches, Coconuts, and Notes—appear throughout the temple, with their placements designed to reward vertical exploration and off-path curiosity.
• The level's sand and crumbling-floor elements introduce a time-pressure dynamic not as prominent in the franchise's earlier, more static indoor heists.
• Bentley's role in decoding the vault mechanism is consistent with his franchise-wide function as the crew's technical and analytical backbone, even in a setting as ancient as an Egyptian temple.