The fresh Temple of Horus from the Edfu, among the best-maintained Greco-Roman internet sites inside the Egypt, will likely be paired with Kom Ombo
It’s really no secret you to Wally and i like temples and you will went along to as much as i maybe you are going to during the all of our time in Egypt. All of our preferred had been the newest shorter-hectic of these, together with Temple away from Horus on Edfu dropped to your this category.
Wally and you may Duke hired a drivers and you can help guide to bring her or him regarding Aswan to Luxor, stopping on Kom Ombo and Edfu on route up.
The town out-of Edfu and its own Ptolemaic-several months temple was about a-two-hours drive regarding the Forehead of Kom Ombo and you can sits to the south-west Bank of your own Nile.
Romantic Edfu Temple
? New evil goodness Seth is revealed when it comes to a beneficial hippopotamus, their diminutive dimensions rendering him smaller threatening.
In the antiquity, Edfu are also known as Behdet, while the part was described as Wetjeset-Hrw, “The place where Horus Was Extolled.” Regional lore hypothesized this is the site of your tough and final battle anywhere between Horus, an effective falcon-headed goodness of your own heavens, with his sinful sibling, Seth, a great jackal-headed god regarding a mess exactly who murdered Horus’ father Osiris. The modern Arabic name, Edfu, originates from this new old Egyptian title Djeba, or Etbo when you look at the Coptic. Djeba setting Retribution City, that it becoming in which the opposition out-of Horus had been taken to justice.
Construction towards the Temple out-of Horus is actually come by Ptolemy III inside 237 BCE, adopting the past local Egyptian pharaoh ruled. Its design integrates classical Egyptian structural issues that have Greco-Roman affects. Focus on the temple try seem to stalled due to insurrection — the latest Egyptians despised their brand new Ptolemaic rulers. It in the course of time took half a dozen successive statutes doing, inside 57 BCE.
The newest mammisi ahead of the fundamental forehead on Edfu remembers Harsomptus, brand new boy away from Horus and you can Hathor. Brand new courtyard facing quicker structure was the website out-of a yearly event of vocal and you can moving.
Ainsi que Tu, Edfu?
The website is one of the better-maintained pharaonic monuments, thanks to becoming almost entirely hidden inside mud up until French archaeologist Auguste Mariette came across her or him and you can first started excavating the ruins within the 1860. At the time, the fresh new wasteland had ingested the new temple as much as the lintels, and you will locals had founded mud-stone dwellings in addition hypostyle hallway.
After generations out of Coptic Christians had a detrimental habit of defiling pictures of one’s gods, that they considered blasphemous.
The focal point of your own temple exterior ‘s the entrance door. Monumental during the size, the new twin pylons scale a remarkable 118 legs extreme. Brand new incised reliefs depict Ptolemy XII smiting his opponents in advance of Horus. Because area of the framework was visually noticeable to all round social, and literacy membership was practically nonexistent — simply at the very top couple you will definitely read and you may generate hieroglyphics — files like this was utilized since propaganda to help you focus on brand new might and you may legitimacy of the rulers.
Artwork toward pylon doors might have been visually noticeable to brand new personal and you can supported due to the fact propaganda to
Wally stands with among the giant falcon statues aside side. It represent the fresh god Horus, and also the quick individual they have been protecting are the one and only Caesarion, the brand new boy out of Cleopatra and you will Julius Caesar.
Beyond the pylon is the legal from products, a huge paved patio encircled on around three corners from the an effective thirty two-columned arcade the spot where the populace do offer the offerings into the sculpture out-of Horus.
Adorning new walls are reliefs portraying the fresh new Meal of the Gorgeous Fulfilling, new yearly reunion between Horus and his awesome spouse, Hathor. The new festival survived 15 months in the coming of your own sacred cult image of the latest deity, and that journeyed by the sacred barge off Dendera so you can Edfu. The brand new statues of gods was indeed reunited during the forehead refuge, where Hathor are symbolically impregnated of the Horus and you will gone back to Dendera so you can sustain the kid Harsomptus.