Dendara is among the oldest and most famous cities of Egypt
(Daily 0600-1700, but they stop admitting visitors at 1600. E£30, students E£15. Use of cameras and video recorders free.)
Dendara was the cult centre of Hathor from pre-dynastic times and there are signs of earlier buildings on the site dating back to Cheops in the Fourth Dynasty (2613-2494 BC). Hathor, represented as a cow or cow-headed woman, was the goddess associated with love, joy, music, protection of the dead and, above all, of nurturing. Her great popularity was demonstrated by the huge festival held at Edfu when her barque symbolically sailed upstream on her annual visit to Horus to whom she was both wet-nurse and lover. As they reconsummated their union the population indulged in the Festival of Drunkenness, which led the Greeks to identify Hathor with Aphrodite who was their own goddess of love and joy.
The Temple of Hathor, built between 125 BC and AD 60 by the Ptolemies and the Romans, is the latest temple on a site begun by Pepi I in the Sixth Dynasty (2345-2181 BC). The enclosing wall of the temple is of unbaked bricks laid alternately convex and concave, like waves of a primeval ocean – perhaps this had some religious significance. The huge, well-preserved temple dominates the walled Dendara complex which also includes a number of smaller buildings. Even though it was built by non-Egyptian foreign conquerors it copies the earlier pharaonic temples with large hypostyle halls leading up, via a series of successively smaller vestibules and storerooms, to the sanctuary at the back of the temple. There are also two sets of steps leading up to and down from the roof sanctuaries.
At the front, the pylon-shaped façade is supported by six huge Hathor-headed columns and reliefs showing the Roman emperors Tiberius and Claudius performing rituals with the gods. Through in the Hypostyle Hall there are 18 Hathor-headed columns, capitals of which are sistra-rattles associated with music and dance. The magnificent ceiling, which is illustrated with an astronomical theme showing the mystical significance of the sky, has retained much of its original colour. It is divided between day and night and illustrates the 14 days’ moon cycle, the gods of the four cardinal points, the constellations, the zodiac, and the elongated goddess Nut who swallows the sun at sunset and gives birth to it at dawn.
The next room, which is known as the Hall of Appearances and is supported by six columns, is where the goddess appeared from the depths of the temple as she was transported on her ritual barque for the annual voyage to Edfu. On either side of the doorway there are scenes of offerings and the presentation of the temple to the gods.
Around this Hall are six small rooms (all lit by sunlight from holes in the roof). The first on the left was the laboratory, used for the preparation of balms and the nine oils used to anoint the statues. It has several inscriptions, with the recipes and instructions for their preparation. The next two rooms were used as store-rooms for offerings such as flowers, beer, wine and poultry. On the right of the hall’s doorway is the Treasury, which has scenes on the base of the walls representing the 13 moun- tainous countries where precious minerals were found. The second room, called the Nile Room, has river scenes and an exit to the back corridor and the well outside. Next is the first vestibule, which was known as the Hall of Offerings because it was there that the priests displayed the offerings for the goddess on large tables. The food and drink was then divided among the priests once the gods had savoured them. On the left a stairway leads to the roof sanctuary. The second vestibule, called the Hall of the Ennead, contained the statues of the kings and gods that were involved in the ceremonies for Hathor while her wardrobe was stored in the room on the left. This leads on to the Sanctuary of the Golden One, which contained Hathor’s statue and her ceremonial barque that was carried to the river each New Year to be transported on a boat upstream to the Temple of Horus at Edfu. The south and north walls of the independently roofed sanctuary depict the pharaoh in various phases of the ceremony. The so-called Corridor of Mysteries around the outside of the sanctuary has nine doors that lead to 11 small shrines with 32 closed crypts, including the crypt where the temple’s valuables would have been stored.
The walls of the stairway from the left of the Hall of Offerings to the Roof Sanctuaries (which, unlike anywhere else, have been completely preserved), depict the New Year ceremony when the statue of Hathor was carried up to the roof to the small open Chapel of the Union with the Disk to await the sunrise. The scenes on the left of the stairs represent Hathor going up while those on the right show her returning down. In the northwest corner of the roof terrace is Osiris’ Tomb, where ceremonies commemorating Osiris’ death and resurrection were carried out. In the east corner there are two rooms with the outer one containing a plaster-cast copy of the original Dendara Zodiac ceiling that was stolen and taken to the Louvre in Paris in 1820. The Zodiac was introduced to Egypt by the Romans and, although Scorpio’s scorpion is replaced by a scarab beetle and the hippo-goddess Tweri was added, this circular zodiac held up by four goddesses is virtually identical to the one used today.
The views from the uppermost level of the roof terrace are superb and provide an excellent opportunity to appreciate the overall scale and layout of the temple buildings, the extensive outer walls and the intensively cultivated countryside surrounding Dendara. From the northern edge of the upper terrace there are good views looking down on to the sanatorium, the two birth houses and the Coptic basilica .
Back downstairs in the temple enclosure on the exterior south wall of the temple there are two damaged reliefs depicting Cleopatra (the only surviving relief depicting Cleopatra in the whole of Egypt) and her son Caesarion, and beyond a number of small ruined buildings surrounding the main temple. At the back is the small Temple of Isis that was almost totally destroyed by the early Christians because of the fear that the worship of Isis as the universal Egyptian goddess might spread. At the front of the main temple to the right is the Roman Birth House, or Mammisi, which has some interesting carvings on its façade and south walls. The Sanatorium, between the Mammisi and the main temple, was where pilgrims who came to Dendara to be healed by Hathor were treated and washed in water from the stone-lined Sacred Lake, now drained of water. Between the two birth-houses is a ruined fifth-century Coptic Basilica, one of the earliest Coptic buildings in Egypt, which was built using stone from the adjacent buildings....
