Temple of Horus at Edfu — temple
Ad Meskens · CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of Horus at Edfu

  • Elevation86 m
  • 2 min read
  • 24.978° N 32.873° E

Interesting facts

  • The temple's Greek name was Apollonopolis Magna, because the Greeks identified Horus, its falcon god, with Apollo.
  • By 1798, when French scholars identified the temple, only the tops of its pylons showed above the sand, and villagers had built houses over its grounds.
  • The present temple faces north–south, while the earlier Horus temple beneath it was aligned east–west.
  • A ruined pylon just east of the temple bears inscriptions of the New Kingdom pharaohs Ramesses I, Seti I and Ramesses II.
  • Wall texts describe the temple's own creation myth: Horus landed as a falcon on a patch of reeds rising from the primeval waters.
  • According to the same myth, the gods Thoth and Seshat designed the first temple of Edfu, which was built of reeds rather than stone.
  • In the foundation myth, sixty gods stood around the temple as a living wall to protect it from hostile forces.
  • The temple's inscriptions were published by French scholars in fourteen volumes between 1892 and 1934.
  • The courtyard columns of Edfu were copied on the façade of Temple Works, an 1830s flax mill in Leeds where sheep once grazed on the roof.

Why it is worth it

The Temple of Horus at Edfu is one of the best-preserved temples to survive from ancient Egypt, and walking into it is the closest one can come to entering a working Egyptian sanctuary rather than a ruin. Its pylon rises about 36 metres, and the carved walls carry the visitor from the gateway all the way to the holy of holies. It owes this state partly to time: over the centuries it was buried under some 12 metres of sand and river silt, until the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette began clearing it in 1860.

It is also, by Egyptian standards, a young building. Work began on 23 August 237 BC under Ptolemy III Euergetes and was finished in 57 BC under Ptolemy XII Auletes - 180 years of construction by the Greek-speaking dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander, carried out entirely in the old pharaonic style. The plan is textbook: a pillared hall, two transverse halls, and at the back a barque sanctuary surrounded by chapels. In the sanctuary stands a polished granite shrine, or naos, of Nectanebo II, kept from an earlier temple on the same spot - one of the last native pharaohs, honoured inside a temple built by his successors' successors. At the entrance two great granite falcons, the image of Horus, stand guard.

The walls are a library in stone. Their inscriptions are a major source for the language, religion and mythology of Ptolemaic Egypt, and they record the temple's own building history alongside the great myth of the struggle between Horus and Seth. Others describe the sacred festivals, above all the yearly journey of the goddess Hathor upriver from her temple at Dendera to meet Horus at Edfu, celebrated as their sacred marriage.

The temple stands on the west bank of the Nile in the town of Edfu, about 100 km south of Luxor, and is a standard stop for cruise boats on the Nile between Luxor and Aswan.

Getting there

The temple is in Edfu itself, less than a kilometre from the town centre on the west bank. The nearest airport is Luxor International Airport (LXR), about 79 km away. Edfu is on the main railway along the Nile, with around ten to twelve trains a day continuing from Luxor towards Aswan; the station is on the east bank, some 4 km from the temple, so a taxi or horse-drawn carriage is needed to cross. Cruise boats moor at the west-bank wharf, and long-distance taxis between Luxor and Aswan often include the stop.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Egypt 35The Most Beautiful Temples in Egypt 7The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Egypt 13The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Egypt 15The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Egypt 18The Most Beautiful Ruins 36The Most Beautiful Temples 95The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Temple of Edfu is an Egyptian temple located on the west bank of the Nile in Edfu, Upper Egypt. The city was known in the Hellenistic period in Koine Greek as Ἀπόλλωνος πόλις and in Latin as Apollonopolis Magna, after the chief god Horus, who was identified as Apollo under the interpretatio graeca. It is one of the best preserved shrines in Egypt. The temple was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC. The inscriptions on its walls provide important information on language, myth and religion during the Hellenistic period in Egypt. In particular, the Temple's inscribed building texts "provide details of its construction, and also preserve information about the mythical interpretation of this and all other temples as the Island of Creation." There are also "important scenes and inscriptions of the Sacred Drama which related the age-old conflict between Horus and Seth." They are translated by the Edfu-Project.

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