Temple of Hathor, Dendera

Interesting facts

In 2023 archaeologists at Dendera unearthed a small limestone sphinx with a smile and dimples, thought to portray the Roman emperor Claudius.

The oldest building still standing in the complex is a birth house built by Nectanebo II, the last native-born pharaoh of Egypt.

Traces suggest a temple stood here as early as about 2250 BC, and a crypt relief shows the Old Kingdom king Pepi I making an offering.

Roman emperors including Trajan appear on the walls dressed as pharaohs, presenting offerings to Egyptian gods.

In the ancient world the town was called Iunet or Tantere, which Greek writers rendered as Tentyra.

The Dendera zodiac was cut from the ceiling in 1820 by a French expedition, and it is still disputed whether Egypt's ruler had permitted its removal.

Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphs, dated the zodiac to the Ptolemaic period, and modern Egyptologists place it in the first century BC.

The processional stairway to the roof is so worn and encrusted that it has earned the nickname the melted stairs.

Beneath the temple lie twelve crypt chambers, some reachable only through a narrow opening in the floor of a room above.

At the sanatorium, pilgrims bathed in sacred water and spent the night hoping for healing dreams sent by the gods.

Why it is worth it

Dendera is the place to understand what an Egyptian temple looked like on the inside. Most temples along the Nile have lost their roofs; the Temple of Hathor at Dendera still has its own, and its painted ceilings, columns and stairways survive so completely that walking in from the desert glare feels like stepping into a building still in use. The complex covers about 40,000 square metres within a massive mudbrick enclosure wall, entered through gateways built under the Roman emperors Domitian and Trajan.

The temple is late, which is part of its interest. The building that stands today was begun in 54 BC under Ptolemy XII Auletes, father of Cleopatra, and decorated well into Roman times: the great columned hall at the front was built under Tiberius. The façade is a screen of columns whose capitals carry the face of Hathor, the goddess of love, music and joy, with her cow's ears, looking out on four sides. Inside, the ceiling of the hall has been cleaned of centuries of soot from lamps and fires, and the colours have come back with startling intensity: deep blue skies, the sky goddess Nut stretched across the vault, the sun's journey through the hours, and a procession of constellations and zodiac signs.

The temple is full of things to find. On the rear outer wall Cleopatra VII is carved together with her son Caesarion, making offerings to the gods. In one of the Osiris chapels on the roof was the Dendera zodiac, a circular map of the heavens from the first century BC; it was cut out and taken to France in the 1820s and now hangs in the Louvre, with a cast in its original place. Below the floor, narrow crypts carry finely carved reliefs, among them the so-called Dendera light, which shows the god Harsomtus emerging from a lotus flower: a scene of creation, despite the modern theories it has attracted. Two staircases lead up to the roof, one straight, one turning, their walls carved with priests carrying the goddess's sacred barque up towards the sun; at the top are the chapels where the mysteries of Osiris were celebrated, and the view opens over the Nile valley.

Around the main temple are a temple of Isis, birth houses (mammisi) celebrating the divine birth, the ruins of a sanatorium where pilgrims sought healing, and a sacred lake.

Getting there

The temple complex lies near Dendera in Upper Egypt, about 6 km from the city of Qena. Luxor International Airport (LXR) is about 52 km away, and many visitors come for the day from Luxor.

Temple of Hathor, Dendera

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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