Tag: dendera

Thursday Throwback – Egypt

This week, the focus is on the temple complex at Dendera, near Qena, particularly the temple of Hathor, the goddess of love and joy.

Another opportunity for a jump back into antiquity this week, as I’m still going through lots of images! This week we’re visiting an amazing temple complex at Dendera, which is near Qena. The most significant temple in this complex is that of Hathor, the goddess of love, beauty, music, fertility and joy.

Here’s a detail from that temple…

Horus in Judgment

Here we see a bit of detail of the gods sitting in judgment. As conservators have been working hard on cleaning the layers of soot and dirt from this temple, we can see the stunning colors. The soot was mainly due to a lot of temples being used for shelter during Roman occupation, as christians were often persecuted and stayed away from the major cities.

I will do a longer post on this temple in the next couple of weeks, as it has lots of interesting features.

iPhone Friday – Egypt

A visit to the Temple at Dendera, dedicated to the goddess Hathor. An immersive, quiet experience showcasing progress in the restoration of the colors of the temple

While in Egypt, it’s perfect time for an iPhone Friday post with one of the many wonderful sites. Yesterday, we visited the Temple at Dendera that is dedicated to the goddess Hathor. We were lucky enough to have the entire site nearly to ourselves, which made for a more immersive experience during this visit.

Here is an image from that visit…

Temple of Hathor

The hall of columns is truly massive in scale and truly imposing. One of the amazing features of this temple is that one can see the cleaning process of the painted walls and ceilings making progress. As cooking fires created a rather sooty layer on much of the temple, careful removal of that layer is revealing the amazing colors once again.

In future posts, I will share images of cleaned surfaces, so the amazing colors can be seen!