Dendara Temple - as it was in its prime and in 1989.

   The Motor Ship Queen Isis docked at Qena in the morning and after an early breakfast we took a five minute coach ride to the Temple at Dendara. A quick snapshot of Qena village as we crossed over the bridge resulted in a lamp post smack bang in the middle of the photo. Like every other amateur photographer I know it wasn’t there when I took the photo.

 

   A Lamp Post on Qena Bridge            Dendara Entrance Stone Causeway          A Temple Guardian

 

   We debarked the coach at the start of an impressively wide stone flagged causeway and were greeted by a Guardian with a huge woolly scarf because it was the middle of winter and he was feeling cold. We were feeling the heat, and how. What must it be like in summer?

        The huge stone gateway was impressive, standing all alone now as the adjoining mud brick wall had been demolished by archaeologists at the front of the sacred enclosure.

 

 
       The Main Gateway               A Headless Lion Sphinx         Sandra finds a Handy Seat

 

  A stone lion sphinx outside the gate had lost its head but the one inside made a useful seat. It soon became apparent that a lot of the antiquities had been severely vandalised. Not modern day vandalism, but from vandalism done by the religious zealots of Christianity and Islam over a thousand years ago who found the pagan gods abhorrent and had tried to destroy their thousands of years of influence over the populous. They did not totally succeed in this, however as superstitious locals chipped away at the face and hands of the carved images of the gods to collect stone fragments which were added to medicine because they still believed it would invoke the power of the old gods and give it greater potency. A carving of a priest offering incense to the gods shows chip marks to the head but the rest of it is in superb condition, for a 2,000 year-old.

 

 
   Vandalised Columns              Our Tour Guide AmR              A Chipped Stone Carving.

 

 Upon entering the temple one has to be impressed by the sheer size of the Hypostyle Hall with its huge towering columns. The carvings high up on the walls and deep inside the temple’s dark interior have survived the vandalism by being out of reach and they are truly superb. Every square inch of the walls is covered with reliefs of the daily routine of the priests and although there are many cartouches for the pharaohs they tend to be pharaohs of the Greek and Roman periods, and some are still blank showing how uncertain life was at that time as the old ways faded and Christianity held sway.

     The original temple to be founded on this site was built by Cheops, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid at Giza, but the temple as we see it today was rebuilt over the period from 116 B.C. to 34 A.D.

 

 
Carvings inside the Temple of an Astronomical Ceiling and Ceremonial Walls

 

Queen Cleopatra was a famous patron and has left her name here. The high roof of the Hypostyle Hall has some marvellous depictions of the Ancient Egyptian Zodiac. Aries the Ram is the god Amun. Taurus the Bull is Apis the Bull. Gemini the Twins are two sprouting plants, (symbolic of the mysteries of Osiris). Cancer the Crab is the god Anubis. Leo the Lion is the god Osiris. Virgo the Virgin is the goddess Isis. Libra the Scales is still the Scales. Scorpio the Scorpion is god Set-Typhon. Sagittarius is still the Archer. Capricorn the Goat is Mendes. Aquarius is still the Water Carrier. Pisces the Fishes is the goddess Nephthys. All very interesting!

 

Star gods and Constellations on the Ceiling of the Hypostyle Hall

 

     Below ground level are the tiny hidden Crypts which are entered through a tiny hole but watch out for the resident bats. Bats can be found in most of the dark places in the temple. Please remember that this is their home and they live here but you are only visiting. These Crypts have some remarkably well preserved alabaster carvings depicting the secret rituals of the goddess Hathor, with some very strange designs of birds, artefacts and paraphernalia.

 

  
The Tiny Crypt under the Inner Sanctuary with the most magnificent Alabaster Carvings

 

   But the most remarkable of all is where thousands of tourists, or pilgrims, have touched the face of Hathor and have worn away 2 thousand years of grime to reveal the original pure white alabaster. Some of the carvings here, like the Hathor Sistrums are easily recognisable but others, like the huge Electric Light Bulbs are quite thought provoking, and the lifeblood of the "These temples were built by aliens" UFO fraternity.

 

  The Dendara Electric Light Bulbs in the Crypt.

 

Well they do look like electric light bulbs and by using poetic license and a vivid imagination one can see snake filaments in wavy lines inside the bulbs, issuing from a lotus flower, which could be viewed as a socket wired to a box on which god Shu and a two-armed Tet Pillar hold up the bulbs, as insulators?
The reality is somewhat different as the story told by the reliefs in the Crypts is of Hor-sma-tawy, the son of Hathor, who emerged from the primordial sea as a serpent on the First Day as the Ancient World rose from the Abyss. And like Horus he was also shown as a hawk. One soon discovers that there are wonders enough to be found in the tales of ancient mythology without having to resort to modern fantasy. Most of the internal chambers have been darkened with the smoke of camp fires or simply with old age but one small section has recently been renovated back to its original colours ... breathtaking.

    The Inner Sanctuary and the surrounding chambers used to have heavy wooden doors and would have been in complete darkness. Only the High Priests and Pharaoh were allowed into this sacred place which means that today one can stand in the very spot that Queen Cleopatra stood when she sailed up the Nile with the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar.  History and legend are alive here.

 

  

Dark mysterious stairways and multi-coloured chambers

 

    Every dark chamber and narrow passageway is alive with reliefs, with some still showing the bright colours with which they were painted over 2000 years ago. One gets a more than a little overwhelmed with the sheer quantity and superb artistry of these dedications to the religious fervour and devotion of these ancient people.  It was their very life.

    Around a corner leads up steps to an Inner Chapel of the goddess Hathor. The ceiling illustrates the Birth of Hathor. It shows her mother, the sky goddess Nut bending over with her arms outstretched touching the floor. Hathor is in the square. Nut swallows the setting sun every evening, without fail, and gives birth to the goddess Hathor every morning at dawn with the rising of each new sun. This is the original Never Ending Story.

 

    

 
      Around other dark corners are two sets of stairs leading up to the roof and this is all part of the grand tour of Dendara Temple. The western ones are straight, long and narrow. Carved figures of priests lining the walls show how the staircase was used for sacred processions up on to the roof of the temple.

     The priestly procession on the left wall is ascending whilst the right-hand wall shows them descending after performing the rituals. So, let's follow in the footsteps of the ancient priests and go up on to the roof into the heat and glare of the hot Egyptian sunshine.

    After a long climb up the dark staircase we emerge in the brilliant blinding sunshine and it takes a moment or two to realise we are looking at another smaller temple, sitting on the roof of the main temple.

 

 

    This temple is the Chapel of the Disc where once a year the statues of the gods were brought up onto the roof to be reanimated by the rays of the sun. High walls prevented any but the participating priests from observing the actual procedure. Unlike a Christian church, where everyone is welcome to come inside, the Ancient Egyptian ceremony was restricted to the priesthood and the general populace was excluded. Some ceremonies were so secret that only the High Priest and the Pharaoh could participate, but now we were also privileged to be walking among these sacred places in the footsteps of the ancients. The columns have some excellent Hathor carvings which I suspect are the result of some gifted restoration work by a modern Egyptian.

 

 

     This painting by David Roberts in 1838 of the Chapel of the Disc on the roof of the Temple shows how much restoration has been done to the main walls.

       At a higher level on the roof are Shrines dedicated to the mysteries surrounding the death and resurrection of the god Osiris, the Magician. It was Osiris who instructed the dead how to navigate in safety through the unknown depths of the Underworld by using magic. The myths tell of how Osiris had been savagely murdered by his brother Set, his body was then cut into pieces and scattered throughout Egypt.

 

  

Hathor the Cow-Eared Goddess     The Astronomical Room       The Stairway to Heaven  

 

 The goddess Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, reunited his mortal remains and was then able to resurrect him with Words of Power.  To his many devotees Osiris is proof of life after death by the use of ritual magic. He is not seen as a "Saviour" or "Redeemer by Sacrifice", as was the Lord Jesus Christ, but simply a fellow human being who overcame the Ancient Gods of Fate by the use of magic, to be reborn.
    Inside the Western Shrine of Osiris is the fabulous Astronomical Zodiac of Dendara. This Zodiac was carved into the ceiling as part of the sacred mysteries surrounding the Death and Resurrection of Osiris.

 

 The Dendara Zodiac

 

   The Zodiac is mysterious and magnificent but, sorry, this is a plaster copy. The original was cut out of the ceiling a long time ago by the French and is now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in France. There were 12 months in the Egyptian calendar year with 3 seasons as opposed to our year of 4 seasons.

 

Months of the Egyptian Calendar (Greek)			Late Period	Original
AKHET (the time of flooding) June 15 - October 15			Late Period	Original
1	Thoth	June 15 - July 15	Djehuty	Tekhy
2	Paophi	July 15 - August 15	pA-n-IpAt	Menhet
3	Athyr	August 15 - September 15	Hwt-Hrw	Hwt-Hrw
4	Khoyak	September 15 - October 15	Ka-Hr-Ka	Ka-Hr-Ka
PERET (the time of sowing) October 15 - February 15			Late Period	Original
1	Tybi	October 15 - November 15	tA-aAbt	Sf-Bdt
2	Mekhir	November 15 - December 15	(pA-n) mhr	Rekh Wer
3	Phamenat	December 15 - January 15	pA-n-Imn Htpw	Rekh Neds
4	Pharmuti	January 15 - February 15	(Pa-N) Rnnwtt	Renwett
SHEMU (the time of harvest) February 15 - June 15			Late Period	Original
1	Pakhons	February 15 - March 15	(PA-n-) xnsw	Hnsw
2	Payni	March 15 - April 15	pA-n-Int	Hnt-htj
3	Epiphi	April 15 - May 15	Ipip	Ipt Hmt
4	Mesore	May 15 - June 15	mswt-Ra	Wep-Renpet

 

   If one takes the time to wander around the roof and examine the huge stone slabs one finds these curious "butterfly" wedge shape slots cut across several of them. The slabs were aligned and then molten liquid bronze was poured into the slots and allowed to cool off and set hard. This held the slabs together and was particularly effected against earthquakes. A lot of the temples in Upper Egypt, Edfu, Kom Ombo, were built using this technique but now for the really interesting bit. Strange to tell, the Temples of the Incas in South America were constructed by using the exact same technique, and these two cultures had never met, or had they? Now, is that weird or is that weird? UFO fraternity rejoice.
    Climbing up the stairs to Heaven over the top of the Astronomical Room and the Western Shrine of Osiris and onto the roof of the Hypostyle Hall gives a bird’s eye view of the whole Temenos, that's a fancy name for a Sacred Enclosure to you and me.  To the front of the enclosure, between the Temple and the Main Gate are the ruins of one of the earliest Coptic Churches in Egypt, dating from the fifth century A.D. There are lots of Coptic crosses carved in  door lintels and other symbols of Christianity litter the devastated site.

 

 

 

 

    The Church itself did not survive the advent of the Islamic era although there is still a strong Christian congregation left in Egypt, about 1 in 10 of the population and because Egypt is still a secular State, they live together in harmony with the Muslims, many businesses being run by a Muslim and Coptic Christian  in partnership.

     Beyond the Church is the Birth House, the Mammisi, which dates back to the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and was used for rites associated with the divine birth and childhood of the infant Horus.

 

    

 

      A distinctly pagan figure of Bes, the god of joy and sexuality, stands guard and uses magic to protect against evil spirits during child birth. Back at the main temple, the east wall has some marvellous rain water spouts high up on the walls at roof level carved as lion heads.

 

  

Lion Rain Water Spouts on the side of the Temple                    The Sacred Lake               

 

  I know I said it never rains in Upper Egypt, but to be more accurate it rains maybe once every blue moon, but when it does rain it comes down with a vengeance and causes a lot of damage with severe flash floods.

     A short distance from the temple is a depression surrounded by a low wall. Actually its a twenty foot deep square hole, which represents the Sacred Lake from the First Days, and it used to fill with water with the annual flooding of the river Nile. but this no longer happens since the building of the Aswan Great Dam and it is usually dry enough for the fool-hardy to venture down the slippery steps into the quiet green oasis.

     On the wall at the rear of the temple is the figure of the famous Queen Cleopatra who played a large part in the construction of the new temple buildings at Dendara. The ancient Pharaohs were the original "spin doctors" using the temples to promote their personal political aims and aspirations.

 

  
Cleopatra as Isis and with Caesarian as Horus

 

 

   Cleopatra was an expert at spin doctoring. After the death of Julius Caesar she compared the situation of herself and her son Caesarian to that of the goddess Isis and her son Horus after the death of her brother-husband Osiris.

    The god-queen Cleopatra declared she was the goddess Isis and made plans for her son to avenge the death of his father just as Horus had avenged the death of his father, Osiris. This made her a danger to the Roman Senate.

A bust of Caesarian found in Alexandria

    The death of Cleopatra meant that Octavian (Emperor Augustus) was left with little alternative but to have Caesarian killed, so he could not fulfil the prophecy but as Roman protocol dictated towards defeated royalty, he had the daughters of Cleopatra well looked after in Rome.

     The temple complex is bounded by a tall mud brick wall to form a sacred enclosure, known as a Temenos, and much of this huge wall is still standing. A stone West Gateway stands proud. People have been living inside this town for several thousand years and there are mounds of debris from demolished mud brick houses, broken pottery and glass some twenty feet high in places.

 

    

I like nothing better than finding stuff and Dendara in the old days was a paradise for stuff. Thousands of years of history scattered all over the place in piles twenty feet high, albeit it in many shattered bits and pieces. I doubt, today, wether one would be allowed to wander about with the unrestricted freedom that we enjoyed, however there are bits of stuff all over the place and you will be walking over them all the time, and don't take any notice when your guide says they are all modern, I know different, some are a thousand or more years old.

 

 

 In the old days the tourists were given a shovel and told to dig up a souvenir of their visit to Dendara Temple. To attempt such a thing these days would result in an abrupt halt to your holiday and a trip to the local jail which is not to be recommended. However, there is no harm in just looking, and one soon discovers that the millions of broken artefacts range from early Pharonic pottery right through to modern pop bottles. Blue colours scream out to be picked up. Are they ancient Pharonic blue faience ware, one wonders? No! They are more likely to be blue painted plaster a few hundred years old from the 1001 Arabian Nights era. Still, one can just stand ankle deep in it all and soak up the vibes, and spot a small stone with a man-made hole in it, out of the corner of one's eye. A fishing weight?  A plumb bob? A loom weight used during weaving? A small token of more things  to come? Clues abound, but what are they saying? This place is a Psychometrists' dream where there are enough artefacts here for them to hold and psyche out for the rest of their natural born lives, and then some.

 

 

 

   So it's back into the cool of the temple and the noisy chattering of its resident sparrow population as they squabble over nesting sites high up in the darkened roof spaces of the Hypostyle Hall.   Seemingly, the Egyptian Sparrows are doing some damage to the temple and plans are under way to fit wire screens to keep them out. A pity really, because its quite relaxing, in its way.

   The sun sets as we bid farewell to Dendara. We all liked it here, and we wished we had more time, but the time has come to go back to the ship, a nice meal, and then an overnight trip up the river, south to Luxor Town.

      I'll never get used to this going up south and going down north bit.

Some more thumbnails for you that are not on the projector

The Temple covered with sand dunes in 1838 in this painting by David Roberts