Abydos and Dendara Temples

Three and a half hours on a bus to Abydos to see the Temple of Sety I, the father of Ramses the Great. The Temple was begun by the father and completed by the son.

Abydos Temple is huge with seven “chapels” each dedicated to a god or a manifestation of a god. The older part of the temple has the finest carvings completely on par with the art in Sety’s Tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Many of the carvings show traces of the original coloring. A number of the carvings were defaced by Iconoclasts during the Christian period.  Each chapel was used by the Pharaoh to make offerings to the respective god or goddess of the chapel. The Pharaoh would anoint the statue of the god, burn incense and make offerings. One of the most interesting aspects of the Temple is the Kings’ List which lists (almost) all the Pharaohs from the earliest times of the Old Kingdom (as far back as the First Dynasty, around 2700 BCE,  which pre-dates the Pyramids) right up to Ramses the Great (around 1200 BCE).

On the way back to Luxor, we visited the Temple of Dendara, not to be confused with the Temple of Dendur at the Met although they are  of  the same period. Dendara was begun in the  Ptolemaic period and continued during the Roman rule. There is a monumental wall carving of Cleopatra VII (yes, the Elizabeth Taylor, Antony and Cleopatra one) with her son by Julius Caesar, Caeserion. You HBO “Rome” fans will know one version of the story!  Dendara is dedicated primarily to the goddess, Hathor, the “cow goddess” and  one of the principal deities. The famous Zodiac ceiling now in the Louvre was removed from this temple in the early19th century.

Having seen a few “late” temples –only 2,000 years old, I am touched by the beauty and delicacy of Dendur at the Met but now realize that it is tiny compared to most its contemporary temples. New York is lucky to have it but one needs to travel here to appreciate the sophistication, scale  and beauty of the Egyptian temples throughout the ages.