Abydos and Dendera Temples............April 5, 2016

Abydos

What amazing temples !  Beautiful archeology and history in these temples.... Abydos is about 2 and half hours away from Luxor and is one of the temples that has retained most of the colorings on the wall.  It is quite interesting seeing the engravings and beautiful bright blues and red colors still on the wall.  



 Abydos, also known as the Temple of Seti I, was rebuilt at the current site but was really a temple that was built over many hundreds of years by many Pharaohs.   The temple has seven chapels built for the worship of the pharaoh Seti I and principal deities that were worshipped.  Also of high importance and interest is what is known as "Abydos King List".  
A very rare list of Egypt's long list of the pharaohs of the principal dynasties are carved on a wall showing the cartouche name of many dynastic pharaohs of Egypt from the first, Namer until Seti I's father, Ramesses I.

 Dendera, about an hour and half from Luxor, on the other hand is supposed to be one of the most preserved temples and a lot of restoration has taken place to return it to its original state but there is still a lot of work to be done.  Finished around the Roman-Greco era and not nearly as old as the Abydos temple, it was however built on the foundations of earlier buildings dating back to Pharaoh Cheops (the famous builder of THE pyramids in Giza.....) and that was over 4,000 years ago !! 



It turns out that through time, with the wave of Christianity and other religions the temples became places where people lived in and hence built fires.  All the soot from the fire damaged a lot of the walls and ceiling.  Truly sad to see this as well as the defacing of many of the faces of the ancient Egyptian Gods because they were considered pagan.

Can you see your astrological sign?

At Dendera, it was were the famous Dendera zodiac was found that now resides at the Louvre Museum in Paris.  It is considered to be the only complete map of the ancient sky and the basis for which later astronomy systems were based.  Actually there is a place in the temple where you can still see depictions of all the figures of astrology, the Ram Aries, the scales of Libra, the Centaur of Sagittarius, the fish of Pisces and all the others. See if you can spot your sign ?!






Cleopatra is on the right

 One also very awesome thing Dendera has is a very rare engraved picture of Cleopatra !  Not many references, pictures or paintings have been found of Cleopatra, so this is truly a special one indeed !

The Crypt !

It was a long day's drive to get to the temples as they were out in the dessert but I'm glad I saw them and have many pictures to remember them by.

Exploring Abydos !