Luxor and the Nile Valley Sights

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1. Temple of Hathor

Set back 2 km (1.8 miles) from the Nile on the edge of the desert, the Temple of Hathor at Dendera is mostly a Greco-Roman Period (332–30 BC) construction, but this location has been a holy place since the Old Kingdom (2687– 2181 BC). Dendera was the cult center for Hathor, the goddess of motherhood and love, and she was often depicted as a cow or as a woman with cow horns. Enter the temple grounds through the mud-brick wall. The gated doorway leads to the Outer Hypostyle Hall, overwhelmingly decorated with beautiful art on every surface. The hall consists of 24 huge columns with Hathor-head capitals, some of which were defaced during the Christian era. Look up at the immaculately carved and painted ceiling, recently cleaned and restored, which shows diagrams of the night sky and signs of the zodiac. The sky goddess Nut is seen swallowing the sun disk, and it passes through her body so she can give birth to it the next morning. The next room is the six-column Inner Hypostyle Hall. Six small rooms open off this hall, and the carvings show what was stored in them, such as ritual perfumes, jewelry, and the bounty of the harvest. Walk on to the Sanctuary, where the statue of the goddess would have been kept. Below the sanctuary are several Crypts that held additional statues of Hathor brought out on festival days. Some of the crypt rooms can be visited; to gain access, though, you might have to give the temple guardian a baksheesh (tip). Claustrophobes beware: the steps down are steep, and the rooms are small, but the reliefs have incredible detail that would have only been seen by a select few. Stairways on either side of the sanctuary lead to the Roof, the walkways' walls carved with priestly processions wending their way up the sides. Head to the chapel in the northeastern corner to see the Dendera Zodiac, a circular bas-relief that shows zodiac signs and constellations that's the only known complete map of the ancient sky. Sadly, the one here is a plaster recreation—the original is at the Louvre in Paris. A metal staircase leads to the highest part of the roof, reopened in 2020, which offers a panoramic view of the temple grounds. Again, though, you might have to give the temple guardian a baksheesh to be able to climb up. Back on ground level, walk around the temple building to see lion-headed gargoyles. On the back of the temple, find the scene of Queen Cleopatra VII—yes, the famous one who was involved with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and was Egypt's last pharaoh—presenting her son, Caesarion, to the gods as the next ruler of Egypt. Nearby, behind the main temple, is the small Temple of Isis, which is strangely oriented both east–west and north–south. Walls show scenes of the divine birth of Isis. As in the main temple, the early Christians defaced a number of the images of the ancient Egyptian gods. To the west is the Sacred Lake, once used in rituals but now a sandpit with a few palm trees.  Back toward the complex entrance are the mud-brick remains of the Sanatorium, where religious pilgrims came to bathe and be healed. Two of the buildings to the north are Mammisi, chapels that depict the birth of a god and were used to "prove" the divinity of the king. Nectanebo I (379–361 BC) built the southern chapel, but the Ptolemies decorated it. The mammisi closest to the complex entrance is from the Roman era, built mainly by Trajan (AD 98–117). It celebrates the birth of the god Ihy, son of Horus and Hathor, as well as the divinity of the pharaoh. The sanctuary is surrounded by an ambulatory, the outer portion of which is partially decorated. Between the mammisi lies a 5th-century Coptic Basilica. It no longer has a roof, but the trefoil apse and several shell niches are still visible from its hall.