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.
Apologies for skipping a Wednesday Window, as we were enjoying the hospitality and antiquity of Egypt. The trip was truly amazing and there are still lots of photos to process and posts to write for weeks to come! While in Egypt, I did capture a window or two.
Here’s one of those window images…
A View from GEM
On our last day in Cairo, we visited the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is a mind-blowing experience! Located in Giza within view of the pyramids on the plateau, this is a must see. Not only because of the collection that is housed within, but also because of the architecture of the building itself. It is a true masterpiece and its organization of the collection is inspiring. Definitely set aside a day to get a taste of the collection; it would take weeks to see everything housed here.
This is my mid-week contribution to the Monday Window thread, a creation of Ludwig Keck. To read more about Ludwig, check this page.
We take a quick look at Luxor Temple, stunningly lit at night to amaze visitors from all around the globe!
Today a bit of a shorter post, as returning to work has been rather busy! During our Egyptian journey, we enjoyed a wonderful time in Luxor. From that locale you will have seen the 3 part series of posts on the Karnak Temple Complex.
We follow the avenue of the sphinxes to this great temple…
Luxor Temple
Here we see the entrance Pylon of the Luxor Temple. You may notice that there is only a single obelisk, which creates an asymmetry. The companion to this obelisk is in Paris on the Place de la Concorde.
This temple is connected with the Karnak Temple Complex by the avenue of the Sphinxes. This 2,700m road was restored and re-opened in 2021, so that one can walk from one temple complex to another.
We explore some of the details of Karnak, such as the Seti II stela, Ramses II’s cartouche, and an Amenhotep III scarab.
As the first posts in this series (Part 1 and Part 2) focused on some rather large aspects of Karnak, I want to bring out some of the other details as well. In all honesty, I wish I had another 5-6 hours at the complex to delve deeper into some of these details.
The first one is a stela that is placed in the entrance walk on the left hand side. This might get little attention among all those ram-headed sphinxes…
Seti II Stela
This stela speaks of the offerings made by Seti II to Amun-Re. Part of what interests me in this are the various king names given on the stela as well as the offerings themselves. I will need to spend a bit of time working on the translation!
The second detail I want to draw attention to is a cartouche you’ll see in many places…
Ramses II Cartouche
Of course, Ramses II’s throne name cartouche is ubiquitous, but if you think this cartouche sounds anything like Ramses, you may be surprised. The cartouche is prefaced by sꜢ-rꜤ [sa-re] which translates to ‘Son of Ra’. In the cartouche we can transliterate to wsr-mꜢꜤt-rꜤ stp.n-rꜤ [usr-maat-ra stp.n-ra]. This translates to ‘The justice of Ra is powerful, chosen of Ra’. This is a great conversation starter during your next cocktail party!
Wandering around the site, there were lots of interesting items. Here’s one that seemed underrepresented…
Scarab of Amenhotep III
This mighty, and lucky Scarab sits atop an oval red granite plinth. It is likely that this was part of Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple on the western bank in Thebes. It was moved to a location near the Sacred Lake at Karnak at a later time (likely by Taharqo – 690-664 BCE). It’s not often that we run across a dung beetle of this size!
The last item that I would like to point out is that all the wonderful archaeologists and egyptologists must love solving puzzles! Here are some pieces found around the site…
Foot and Sandal
What caught my attention on this piece is the exquisite detail of the foot in the sandal. Also, it makes me wonder where the rest of this relief might be. Here’s another puzzle piece…
Puzzle Pieces
This piece appears to have sheared off a larger section. It again makes one wonder where the rest might be. Of course, a lot of the sites that we visited had to be reassembled over the years, as sand, creative re-use of material by many generations and natural forces didn’t preserve all these monuments in their original state.
Hats off to all the people who have worked over time to bring us these monuments and a view into antiquity. It truly helps us connect across the millennia!
The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak Temple is characterized by its massive scale, featuring 134 columns that symbolize a primeval papyrus swamp linked to Egyptian creation myths.
In yesterday’s post about the Karnak Temple Complex, we focused on the walk into the Amun-Re precinct and the first courtyard. Today, we’ll explore the Great Hypostyle Hall, which easily could have its own series of posts.
The first thing that we notice about the Great Hypostyle Hall is the massive scale of this part of the structure. Here we’re walking towards the hall, as we’re crossing the 2nd Pylon…
2nd Pylon
The Great Hypostyle Hall consists of 134 columns in 16 rows with the middle rows being the tallest at 24m high and 10m circumference. These columns supported a roof and covered an area of 5,000m2 (54,000 sq.ft.).
Looking up to the sky along these columns, we can imagine what the impact on worshippers of Amun-Re might have been…
Center Row Columns
The 134 columns represent a primeval papyrus swamp from which Atum, the primordial God in Egyptian mythology, arose from the waters of Nun, the oceanic abyss. This is part of the ancient Egyptian creation myth. The hall itself was created during the height of Seti I.
Here, we get a sense of how small we are among the papyrus swamp…
Great Hypostyle Columns
Even though the hall was built during Seti I’s reign, a keen observer will notice that many of the cartouches are from Ramses II. This is due to decorations of the southern wing being completed during Ramses II’s time.
We can also see that there were windows up high in the transition from the taller center rows to the outer rows of columns…
View to Windows
The level of detail in the decorations is astonishing, as we can see here…
Column Detail
A project has been under way to restore the vibrance of the colors by removing the layers of soot and dirt that obscure the beauty of the decorations and hieroglyphs. Also in these images we see the new roof sections that have been placed to give a sense of what the original might have looked…
Column Detail
Looking at the immensity of scale and the exquisite skill of the architects and artisans, we can’t help but stand in awe of this hall that was built more than 3,000 years ago.
More to come and we’ll go into some of the finer details in future posts.
More from our trip to Egypt, focusing on the Karnak Temple Complex. This historical site contains temples spanning from the Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Era.
As I’m starting to go through the many photos from our trip to Egypt, I will write a series of blog posts to delve a bit deeper into each area. Today, I’m starting with the Karnak Temple Complex, also known as Karnak.
A couple of things to note both about Karnak, in general. The Karnak complex sees temples from many time periods extending from the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000-1700 BCE) to the Ptolemaic Era (305 – 30 BCE). The area of the complex was named Ipet-isut in ancient Egyptian, meaning ‘The Most Select of Places’. The modern name Karnak comes from the nearby village of el-Karnak, which means ‘fortified village’.
Let’s start with the entrance toward the 1st Pylon…
Entrance towards 1st Pylon
In this approach, we look at the 1st pylon, large trapezoidal walls that form the entrance toward the courtyard. This pylon is 113m wide and 15m thick at its base. The entrance way is lined with a procession of ram-headed sphinx statues, representing Amun-Re, whose temple one enters. Construction of this pylon was started in the 30th dynasty and never completed.
As we enter the courtyard, let’s take a closer look at the rightmost of the 1st pylon trapezoids…
Karnak – 1st Pylon
There are still ancient mud bricks piled up against the inside of the pylon, which would have been used as ramps during the construction phase.
As we enter the courtyard, we get a sense of the scale ahead of us…
Kiosk of Taharqa
Here we’re looking at the Kiosk of the pharaoh Taharqa, one of the Kushite rulers of Egypt. The columns of this kiosk were 21m tall, and the one remaining column on the right gives us a sense of that size.
Also in this courtyard we find a colossal statue of Ramses II…
Colossus of Ramses II
Ramses II is one of the best known pharaohs due to the length of his reign and his volume of construction. In this statue we see Ramses II wearing the nemesis headdress with the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. At his feet is the Princess Bent’anta, holding a flower and wearing a Uraeus crown of rearing cobras. The princess’ name, Bet’anta, is Syrian, meaning Daughter of Anath (Anath is a Canaanite goddess).
In the next episode, we’ll go into the great hypostyle hall.
As we return from the grand Egyptian vacation, a highlight from the Grand Egyptian Museum.
As we came back home rather late last night (or early this morning) from our Egyptian vacation, a quick iPhone Friday post. During our last day in Cairo we spent a little bit of time at the Grand Egyptian Museum, aka the GEM. At this time, the full museum is not open yet, but even so, it is a truly stunning museum.
Here’s one quick photo from the GEM…
Akhenaten
Of course, we know this pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty for two things in particular. His establishment of a monotheistic religion of the Aten, or Sun Disk is the first. Although, he might be best known for his queen, Nefertiti, whose beauty has captured the imagination of many across the ages. Her bust can be seen in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.
As the first establisher of monotheism, Akhenaten made many enemies among the priest class, which got him to be almost lost to history. Upon his death, his monuments were dismantled, destroyed or hidden, and polytheistic practices were restored.
Reflecting on the final stage of our Egyptian travels along the Nile. This trip exceeded expectations, leaving a desire for more time to appreciate the experiences and connections made.
As we’re in the final stage of our Egyptian travels, a look back at how people would have traveled in times past. Nowadays, we jet around the world, cruising in comfort whether in the air or on the river. We can still imagine that the pace might have been a bit different in previous centuries.
Here’s a taste of what it might have been…
Camels along the Nile
These camels were just happily grazing near the banana plants, foraging on all the tidbits that interest them. It would have been a very different experience for us, if we’d traveled by camel. I wonder if the slower pace would allow us more time to breathe in the culture, landscape and antiquities.
This trip to Egypt was nothing short of amazing, exceeding all our expectations. The only thing that could make it better is to have even more time to appreciate all we saw, all the people we met… Maybe next time?
Edfu provides us with our last and interesting temple in Egypt
As our guide, Ibrahim, predicted, this was our last beautiful temple of this trip! He was right in that the Temple at Edfu didn’t disappoint!
Here’s a quick view with an airport edit…
Edfu Glory
This temple is dedicated to Horus and was built during the Ptolemaic and Hellenistic period. There are a number of interesting features to be found. More on those later!
A look at the impact of the Aswan High Dam on life in Nubian communities.
One of the interesting aspects of going on a cruise with Viking is the exposure to historical context at many levels. During our time in and around Aswan, there were a variety of visits that included more than just ancient temples. We visited a Nubian village as part of this immersion.
Here’s an image from this visit…
A Nubian Village
As part of the construction of the Aswan High Dam both people and temples were affected. Some of the temples have been high profile projects, such as Abu Simbel and Philae. What should not be lost is that many village were forced to move and these people needed to carve out a new living.
These Nubian villages were given plots of land, such as the one in the photo to re-establish themselves. As we were lucky enough to be able to visit one of their homes, we could experience a bit of this. More photos in the future on this subject!
