Encompassing over 430,556 square feet, the Dendera temple complex is massive and was a site of religious importance to the Ancient Egyptians as far back as Pharaoh Pepi I (ca. 2250 BC). However, the most impressive building dominating the site today is without doubt the Temple Of Hathor, which was built primarily during the Ptolemaic Dynasty (ca. 54 BC).
As some backstory and history here, the Ptolemaic Dynasty, during which the Temple of Hathor was built, was a pretty tumultuous and politically volatile time in Egypt. It was so bad in fact that many of the cartouches carved on the temple walls were just left blank. (The stone masons apparently didn’t trust that the same dude would be in charge by the time they got done committing his name to stone.)
Which, in all honestly, was a pretty fare concern since (as one example) in 80 BC Ptolemy XI murdered his wife (who everybody really really liked) and his stepmother Berenice III to boot after only 19 days of co-rule with her. This, as one can imagine, sort of outraged the citizens of Alexandria who marched into the palace dragged the pharaoh out and killed him. So yeah, not the best of times.
In the end, the temple (and monumental stone gateway) was finally completed under the Roman emperor Trajan, who you can see depicted on the walls of the complex making offerings to Hathor.
The goddess Hathor (often depicted as a woman with the ears or head of a cow), was believed to help women to give birth, the dead to be reborn, and the cosmos to be renewed. She was seen as the goddess of sexual love, fertility, music and dancing, a mother, a consort and daughter of the creator god, (talk about wearing a lot of hats) and was considered the ultimate personification of kindness and love… (you know, after a brief period of time where she was originally a blood-thirsty deity named Sekhmet unleashed on mankind to punish humans for their sins… yeah… apparently Egypt is very supportive of people turning over new leaves)
Each year, during a period known as the Happy Reunion, the Ancient Egyptians believed that she would journey from her temple at Dendera to spend some time with her hubby, Horus, at his temple in Edfu. At the end of this annual “reunion” between husband and wife, it was thought that the return of Hathor to Dendera would signal the official beginning of the flood season of the Nile.
In one particularly weird/awkward/WTF tale about Hathor, Ra (the big guy, creator, sun God) gets hella angry when insulted by the baboon God Babi. According to the story he’s so angry, dude decides “the hell with this world” and lies down on his back. (Apparently this was not a good sign and basically signaled the world might end if he didn’t get back up and quick.) So Hathor decides to visits her father to “talk” some sense into him…. And by “talk” I mean she supposedly marched into his room and then just flashed her genitals at him. At which we are then told that Ra immediately laughs (WTF is going on here anyway), gets up, and goes back to work as normal. Hathor has saved the world by arousing the sun god and driving away his evil mood… with her va-jay-jay… woah… seriously I don’t even know where to begin unpacking all that lol…
Ya’ll, here is where my photojournalist card get’s revoked… because I swear to you on my life that after I took the above photos our guide took us to a little room where he opened up a trap door in the floor where we then had to crawl down a small flight of steps and then through a little hole in the wall only about 2.5ft in diameter into a subterranean crypt. (YES! I KNOW!!!) The Indiana Jones feelings were strong this day.
Sadly I wasn’t able to get an action shot of us crawling down there… (partly due to the close quarters and partly due to being part of a group and not wanting to cause a bottle neck in the small tight space, and well partly because I was just too excited to remember to take photos lol) but here are a few images from the underground hallway we crawled into.
Back up above ground again and out of the underground passageway, the Indiana Jones vibes continued as we explored deeper into the temple…
One of the most well-preserved temples in all of Egypt, the vibrancy of the original paint still visible on the walls and ceiling throughout the site is truly breathtaking, especially considering it was once covered in soot from Bedouins and other desert people seeking asylum inside its walls.
With the rooms only a quarter of their normal size after being mostly buried in dessert sands, the small campfires they lit inside the temple for cooking and warmth quickly coated the exposed walls and ceiling in a dense layer of thick black soot. This resulted in the need for a massive cleaning and restoration project by modern archeologists, who (after clearing away all the sand) have been painstakingly working to clean and remove the soot from the walls and ceiling over the last several decades to reveal the vibrant paint below. In fact, if you look closely at the images earlier in this post, you’ll find a small square they left covered in soot as a comparison.
After exploring the first level of the temple we ascended a stone corridor that spiraled all the way up to the roof (mimicking the path a bird would take to ascend into the sky, nice little nod to Horus right there…).
Keeping with the Horus/bird analogy, the staircase that you descend down from the roof conversely is a long straight stone staircase, again mimicking the path a bird would take as it descends from the sky.
What You Need To Know
You Want To Visit This Site During The Day
While many of the temples around Egypt are available to visit at night, many of which are beautifully lit and otherworldly to experience (I’m looking at you Luxor Temple), I would HIGHLY recommend visiting the Dendera temple complex during the day if at all possible. By night you simply won’t be able to see or appreciate the vivid colors of the beautifully preserved paint throughout the temple, the way the sunlight streams through the pillars, or the views from the roof of the building.
Getting There
Due to its location being a bit off the beaten path, most visitors to the Dendera Temple Complex tend to be part of an organized tour from a Nile Cruise, like the one we were on with the Steam Ship Sudan. However it is totally possible to visit the site on your own.
Located about 3 miles southwest of the city of Qena on the opposite bank of the Nile from the main settlement. It is possible to arrive by train and hire a local taxi to take you to the site. From Luxor station it’s only about a 40-55 min train ride. It is also possible to hire a taxi in Luxor to drive you directly up to the site and back again. If planning to go this route, pairing a visit to this temple in addition to the Temple at Abydos makes a great day trip from Luxor. Additionally, it you aren’t interested in a long Nile cruise, but want to travel up to Dendera by boat, there are several companies that offer short day cruises from Luxor up to Dendara and back again.
Shining Light On Some Ancient Alien Tech
Well.. errr… at least that’s what some fringe scientists and conspiracy theorists believe can be seen on the walls down in the crypt below the temple. And I’ll be honest, it is a bizarre scene to be sure.
Featuring two human figures holding what looks like two giant eggplants with a snake inside them, I’ll admit the relief is a bit strange, ok really strange. But to some, it is so strange that it has become concrete proof of alien contact with the ancient Egyptians and showcases what they believe to be the depiction of an ancient electric light-bulb. If this sounds like a fun rabbit trail you want to read more about, I highly suggest checking out THIS ARTICLE on the Ancient Aliens website, its just as bizarre and strange a read as you’re thinking in your head right now, you’re welcome.
Sadly, most credible Egyptologists will tell you that it’s simply a mythological depiction of a djed pillar and a lotus flower that is spawning a snake inside, representing various aspects of Egyptian mythology… which is totally way less fun, but probably closer to the truth.
The Infamous Zodiac Of Dendera
This temple is famous for a few reasons, there is of course the beautifully preserved paint and carvings, the infamous “Egyptian light bulb” located in the crypt, but vastly more famous than either of those is the Zodiac of Dendera.
Let’s start off with the fact that, whoops, its not actually at Dendera anymore… It was ripped out the ceiling and transported to France in 1821, (with the permission of Mohamed Ali Pasha, who was the Turkish viceroy of Egypt at the time and seemed to really enjoy giving away bits and pieces of the country). So if you want to see the original, it’s at the Louvre in Paris, the zodiac at Dendera is merely a copy. Which, funnily enough, was copied soot and all from the original, which is why the copy at the site appears so black compared to the original in the Louvre which has been cleaned.
Is is sadly NOT a giant ancient horoscope or astrological tool, it IS however the only complete map that we have of the ancient Egyptian sky.
In any case, before it got carted off to the Louvre, it lived in the ceiling of a small chapel up on the roof of the Temple Of Hathor here at Dendera. A bas-relief ceiling carving depicting a collage of human and animal figures, it reads as a map of the night sky. The figures around the edge of the circle represent the 36 decans (a group of stars into which the night sky was divided.) Each decan rose just before dawn for 10 days in the year. Above their heads are the 12 signs of the zodiac as known to the ancient Egyptians. Is is sadly NOT a giant ancient horoscope or astrological tool, it IS however the only complete map that we have of the ancient Egyptian sky. Here’s a version that’s a bit easier to see the figures on…
This relief is so precise in fact, that based on the particular configuration of planets and constellations displayed on the Zodiac of Dendera (which apparently only occurs about once every thousand years or so) astronomers have been able to pinpoint the date of this particular sky map to have been created sometime between June 15th and August 15th in the year 50 BC. There are even two eclipses that are accurately represented on the Zodiac exactly where they would have occurred at that time.
And while this relief is from much later in Egyptian history (most likely after a melding of Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek influences on the culture), astronomy has been a essential part of Egyptian culture from it’s earliest days. The knowledge it granted about time, the changing of the seasons and impending annual flooding were vital to the Egyptian agriculture and was a source of great power for the priests whose duty it was to study the sky.
Cleopatra & Caesarion
If you ask a random person off the street to name the first two ancient Egyptians to pop into their heads you’d probably hear a lot of King Tuts and Cleopatras. Which is amusing since both had such short reigns and contributed little in the way of temples and monuments to remember them by. Cleopatra (Did you know there was more than one? The famous one we’re talking about here and you’re thinking of is Cleopatra VII!) does however, (unfortunately?) have the claim to have been the last Queen of Egypt. (Although *technically speaking Cleopatra was actually Macedonian and of Greek decent, since that’s who had been in power since the death of Alexander the Great.)
In case you haven’t seen the Elizabeth Taylor movie lol, by the time Cleopatra reached the throne in 51 BC, Rome had pretty much just taken over the entirety of the Mediterranean region, Egypt being one of the final hold outs. After being ousted from power by her brother/husband Ptolemy XIII (dude was 10 years old….) after just a few years of co-regency with him she decided it might be wise to charm her way into Caesar’s affections. Which proved to be a pretty good idea since when Caesar ultimately defeated Ptolemy XIII in a civil war he decided to restore Cleopatra to the throne in 47 BC.
One thing led to the next and Cleopatra’s “charm” eventually produced a child by Caesar (a child he never officially recognized as his), a son she named Ptolemy XV Caesarion, whom she hoped would help unify Rome and Egypt into a great new empire.
One thing led to the next and Cleopatra’s “charm” eventually produced a child by Caesar (a child he never officially recognized as his), a son she named Ptolemy XV Caesarion, whom she hoped would help unify Rome and Egypt into a great new empire.
Caesar leaves to go fight in Asia Minor and for some reason tells Cleopatra to marry and share the crown with her other younger brother, Ptolemy XIV who was still a child, Cleopatra did so but then followed Caesar to Rome in 46 BC… which last right up until Ceasar was assassinated in 44 BC. She decided it would be a good idea to get out of there and go home after that. On her return to Egypt she orders her new brother/husband Ptolemy XIV killed so she can instal herself and Caesarion as co-regents on the throne.
Enter Mark Antony
Deep breath… Ok so after Caesar’s death Mark Antony and Octavian are basically sharing the power of Rome. Antony meets Cleopatra and its love at first sight. Things get a bit rocky with Octavian so he goes back to Rome and marries his sister Octavia to hopefully make peace. That doesn’t really work out and eventually he decides to head back to Egypt. By this time, him and Cleopatra now have three kids together, a twin boy and girl and young son.
Then after winning a big battle in Armenia, Antony sort of loses his mind and starts just giving away chunks of the Roman empire to Cleopatra and his children (who are all like less than 10 years old) and declares Caesarion Caesar’s legitimate son and rightful heir. Octavian is pretty pissed off about this and mounts an invasion into Egypt where he defeats Antony in a sea battle… partly due to the fact that Cleopatra’s fleet inexplicably withdrew from the battle and sailed back to Egypt leaving Antony with no back-up… this was a lot for the dude to handle and he commits suicide a year later. (Or if you’d rather the Shakespearian ending, he hears a false rumor of Cleopatra’s death and commits suicide by falling on his sword.)
Cleopatra knows Octavian is coming for her too at this point, and decides that rather than abasing herself before him and letting him drag her back to Rome and parade her around as a conquest she is going to kill herself with the venomous bite of a cobra! Duh dun da!!!!! And thus ended the Empire of the Pharaohs.
But what about the three kids!?
Glad you asked. Before her death Cleopatra has Caesarion shipped off with his Greek tutor to keep him safe, but he’s betrayed and Octavian’s men follow them and kill the boy. Her three kids by Mark Antony oddly get adopted by his wife Octavia… who raises them as her own. It’s likely the two boys didn’t make it to adulthood since there are no records of them, however Cleopatra’s daughter marries the King of Numidia.
Ok now back to what on earth all this has to do with the Temple of Hathor at Dendera.
In all of Egypt, on of the only place you will ever see any evidence of this epic story is at this temple, where, carved on a back wall larger than life, is a huge relief of Cleopatra and her son Caesarion shown in traditional egyptian garb offering sacrifices to the gods.
We Discovered This 
