Dendera, between Abydos and Luxor on the Nile, is a Ptolemaic temple to Hathor. On the back wall, the builders included a portrait of Cleopatra and her son, possibly without their knowledge as the Ptolemaic pharoahs rarely made it this far down the Nile. The temples lost support and funding during the era, when the focus of Egypt moved from Memphis to Alexandria, and the temples both had to show support for the current Pharaoh as well as find ways to support themselves. The temple of Dendera was famous for the annual new year's festival, when a statue of Hathor would be carried on a barge up the river to visit her husband Horus at his temple in Edfu. The temple was never entirely finished, but the main hall is beautifully decorated, with the serene face of Hathor on each side of the capitals. The ceiling of the main hall is decorated with zodiac signs and other astrological symbols, and a room on the second floor has a astronomical ceiling use to calculate the lunar year, the hours of the day, and the signs of the zodiac. The walls of this small room are covered in strange notations, perhaps dates or other observations.
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Go to Egypt Photo Database Page