Dendera Temple

Dendera is one of the most important temple sites of Egypt and provides examples of a particularly rich variety of later temple features. The area in which the temple is located is that of ancient lunet or Tantere (Greek Tentyris), a provincial capital and important religious site during several periods of Egyptian history. Early texts refer to a temple at Dendera which was rebuilt in Old Kingdom times, and several New Kingdom monarchs, including Tuthmosis III, Amenophis III, and RamessesII and III are known to have embellished the structure. The temple of Hathor which stands at the site today dates to the Graeco-Roman Period, however, and is one of the best-preserved temples of this period in Egypt, surviving despite the destruction of the temples of Hathor's consort Horus and their child Ihy or Harsomptus which originally stood close by.
Like most Egyptian temples, Dendera is oriented towards the Nile, but because the Nile bends here, the structure actually faces north, rather than east-west as would normally be the case. The temple area is fronted by several Roman period kiosks and a propylon gateway, built during the reigns of Domitian and Trajan, which was set into the massive mud-brick walls which surround the enclosure. Although the site lacks a colonnade and the two pylons which ought to precede the inner temple, an unfinished inner enclosure wall of stone surrounds a courtyard with side entrances which open before the large hypostyle hall added in the 1st century AD by the emperor Tiberius. Unlike those of earlier temples, the facade of this hypostyle is constructed as a low screen with intercolumnar walls exposing the hall's ceiling and the Hathor-featured sistrum-capitals of its 24 columns. Each column bears a four-sided capital carved with the face of the cow-eared goddess, though every one of the faces was vandalized in antiquity. The ceiling of the hall retains much of its original colour, however, and is decorated as a complex and carefully aligned symbolic chart of the heavens, including signs of the zodiac (introduced by the Romans) and images of the sky-goddess Nut who swallows the sun disc each evening in order to give birth to it at dawn.
The great hall leads to a smaller, inner six-column hypostyle called the 'hall of appearances', as it was here that the statue of the goddess ‘appeared’ from her sanctuary for religious ceremonies and processions. Scenes on the walls of this hall depict the king participating in the foundation ceremonies for the construction of the temple, and on either side doors open into three chambers which were used as preparation areas for various aspects of the daily ritual An opening through the outer eastern wall allowed offering goods to be brought to this area, and a parallel passage from one of western chambers led to a well. The temple's inner core was constructed by several later Ptolemaic kings - the uninscribed cartouches of its walls reflecting the often uncertain nature of their reigns. The area includes an offering hall, in which sacrifices were dedicated, and a 'hall of the ennead' where statues of other deities assembled with Hathor before processions began, as well as the sanctuary of the goddess herself. Although empty, decorations on the sanctuary walls suggest it once contained a stone shrine for the statue of Hathor as well as her portable barque (and possibly during visiting festivals' the barque of her consort, Horus of Edfu). Around the central sanctuary are eleven chapels of the other deities who associated with Hathor at this site, including ones for Hathor’s chief attributes, the sacred sistrum and the menat necklace. A niche in the wall of the chapel directly behind the main sanctuary is sunk into the temple wall at the point where a shrine of the 'hearing ear' is located on its outside surface - allowing the goddess to 'hear' the prayers directed to her.
A number of crypts where temple treasures were stored are located in the walls and beneath the floors of the chambers in the rear part of the temple. The most important object kept in these crypts was a statue of the ba of Hathor which was taken from its hiding place to the roof of the temple in the important New Year's festival celebrated at this site. A staircase to the west of the offering hall (with the ascending figures of the king and various priests with the shrine of the goddess carved on its right-hand wall) gave access to the roof of the temple and a chapel, where the goddess stayed overnight before beholding the rising sun in a symbolic union with the solar disc. The stairs to the east of the roof (with corresponding scenes of descending figures) were used for the procession's return. The roof of the inner temple also has two parallel sets of rooms on its eastern and western sides which functioned as chapels dedicated to the death and resurrection of Osiris, and also contains representations of the goddess Nut and various chthonic deities. One of these chapels contained a zodiac (now in the Louvre and replaced by a copy). The roof of the hypostyle was reached by another flight of steps with various gods carved along its wall, and this highest area of the temple was used in antiquity by pious pilgrims who awaited signs and miracles from the goddess there. Gaming boards carved into the stone blocks helped these faithful pass the time during their vigils.
At the very rear of the temple, beneath the apotropaic lion-headed waterspouts which drained rainwater from the roof, the exterior wall has scenes showing the massive figures of Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion, who became the great queen's co-regent as Ptolemy XV. At the centre of the wall, directly behind the sanctuary, is the large false door with a gigantic emblem of Hathor -diminished over the centuries by pilgrims who scraped at it to obtain a little of the sacred stone at the point where they could come closest to Hathor herself.
Beyond the stone enclosure wall are the ruins of various outlying buildings of the complex. Moving towards the main temple from the gate and on its western side are the remains of the Roman period birth house built by Augustus shortly after Egypt was added to the Roman Empire. Its scenes depicting Augustus' later successor Trajan offering to Hathor are among the finest to be found in Egypt. The structure was dedicated to the goddess and her child Ihy, and its birth theme is reflected in the figures of the god Bes (a patron of childbirth) carved on the abaci above the column capitals.
Directly south of this mammisi are the remains of a Christian basilica of the 5th century AD, and an earlier birth house of the 30th dynasty and Ptolemaic Period. The latter structure was split by the building of the Roman enclosure wall which required the building of the later birth house. Next are the remains of a mud-brick sanatorium, the only one of its type known from Egyptian temples, where visitors could bathe in the sacred waters or spend the night in order to have a healing dream of the goddess.
To the west of the sanatorium, a small 11th dynasty chapel of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep once stood, which seem to have been dedicated to the cult of the king rather than that of the goddess Hathor, and as such was probably ancillary to the main Middle Kingdom temple. The chapel was moved in modern times, however, and has been re-erected in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Further to south, at the temple's southwest corner, lies the compound’s sacred lake which provided water for priests’ ablutions, With flights of stairs descending from each corner; this stone-lined ceremonial basin is the best preserved of its type in any Egyptian temple. Immediately to the south of Hathor’s temple is the Iseum, the temple of the birth of Isis. The plan of this building was uniquely split with the main part of the structure and its hypostyle hall facing east, but the sanctuary rotated to face north towards the main temple of Hathor.
Within the rear wall of the sanctuary a statue Osiris (now destroyed) was supported by the arms of Isis and Nephthys