the hathor temple at dendera

One of the finest examples of ancient Egyptian art is the temple of the Goddess Hathor in Dendera near Luxor with a particularly rich variety of later temple features… 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 Ramesses II 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 Thy or Harsomptus which originally stood close by.

The artwork on the ceilings and columns is fascinating. Hathor is a multipurpose mother goddess, and her face is shown four times on the top part of each column.

In Ptolemaic and Roman times the worship of Hathor was continued and emperors like Cleopatra, Nero and Hadrian added some structures to the temple complex. When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman empire, the Christian priests converted the temple into a church. They found it necessary to deface the Hathor images by chiseling off hundreds of noses and mouths. Fortunately a lot of the artwork remained intact, and luckily the temple escaped destruction by the later Muslim conquerors—so the Hathor Temple remains one of the best-preserved testimonies of the ancient days.

Nowadays, Dendera has developed into a New Age sanctuary where the worship of Hathor and Isis is being revived. However, it is Westerners seeking meaning who make the pilgrimage to the temple. For the local Muslims, the place of worship is actually a place of illicit idolatry, but many modern Egyptians are proud of their cultural heritage today.