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Right at the heart of Egypt, situated 60 miles north of Luxor and to the south of Abydos, lies the Dendera temple complex – an important religious site in antiquity.
The construction of the main structure of the complex, the Temple of Hathor, was commissioned by the pharaoh Ptolemy XII. His daughter Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Egypt, continued the construction work after his death. Commemorating her dedicated support, a relief showing Cleopatra and her son Caesarion graces the outer southern wall of the temple, serving as an enduring testament to her patronage.
The temple is perhaps best known for the Dendera Zodiac, an intricately carved circular bas-relief depicting celestial constellations, including those of the zodiac, which is now on display in the Musée du Louvre.
The ceiling of the pronaos
The real gem of the temple, however, is the beautifully decorated ceiling commonly known as the ‘Rectangular Zodiac’. It is located in the pronaos of the temple, which is roughly the size of two tennis courts. The brilliance of its original colours can be seen today thanks to the restoration work sponsored by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Some of the first depictions of this ceiling were made by two members of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt: Jean-Baptiste Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, who played a significant role in the production of the Description de l’Égypte. They lived by the maxim mesurer et dessiner – ‘measure and draw’.
De Villiers was the author of a comprehensive chronicle entitled Journal et souvenirs, in which he eloquently recounted his adventures during the Egyptian expedition. In a chapter dedicated to Dendera, de Villiers described his visits to the temple with his companion Jollois. This chapter is a captivating read, offering his impressions of the temple, the challenging circumstances they faced while producing their exquisite drawings, his distress regarding the scarcity of pencils, and a haunting memory of encountering a lifeless body with bound hands in a dimly lit chamber deep within the temple’s interior.
Inspired by the work of Jollois and de Villiers, I embarked on a project to capture more than 5,000 photographs of this spectacular ceiling, endeavouring to reconstruct it in its entirety within a single image.
Hathor
The worship of Hathor can be traced as far back as the Early Dynastic Period (c.3100-2686 BC) in Egypt. She was a multifaceted deity associated with various aspects of life, including music, dance, and rhythmic movements. She was also the personification of emotions and the moods aroused by music. She could be joyful and tender, but sometimes full of rage, dissonant, and violent.
Hathor assumed the sacred role of the goddess of birth and fertility, presiding over the cyclical rhythms that define life’s perpetual dance. Frequently portrayed as a celestial cow adorned with a radiant solar disc between her majestic horns, she symbolises motherhood and nourishment. Her milk was the Milky Way, overarching the celestial dome, giving nourishment to souls during their perilous journey through the underworld. As a celestial deity, she helped to preserve cosmic harmonies.
Those cosmic harmonies are the subject of the ceiling of the pronaos of her temple. The ceiling is supported by 24 imposing columns, fashioned in the likeness of a sistrum, a musical instrument symbolic of the goddess Hathor. The seven panels (Central, East 1-3, and West 1-3) of the ceiling beautifully depict the different celestial rhythms observed by the ancient Egyptians. Together they encompass the totality of existence: from the present, on the central panel, to eternity on the sides. The three panels to the east of the central one represent the day, and the three to the west represent the night.
The central panel, on the temple’s axis, sets the connection between heaven and earth, the divine and the mundane. It represents the present and depicts a winged solar disc, a symbol of Horus incarnated as the pharaoh.
On panel East 1, 12 boats representing the 12 diurnal hours of the day, carry the sun on its daily journey across the sky. A different representation of the sun sits on each boat: a child at sunrise; a teen at mid-morning; a four-headed ram at noon; a mature man at mid-afternoon; and an old man at sunset.
Panel West 1 represents the lunar month. The moon is depicted in perhaps the most exquisite scene of the whole ceiling, at the centre of this panel. Fourteen deities – the Heliopolitan Ennead – are climbing a staircase, helping with the reconstruction of the dismembered body of Osiris, the moon, shown as the eye of Horus. Each step on the staircase represents one of the days of the moon’s waxing. The reconstruction is orchestrated by the wisdom of Thoth, who presides over the scene.
The decans
Panels East 2 and West 2 depict one of the most ingenious ideas devised by the ancient Egyptians: the decans. They divided the sky into 36 equal parts, in each of which they identified a group of stars so that they could recognise that region at night. The first decan to appear on the eastern horizon at sunset marked the first hour of the night. As the night advanced, a new decan appeared on the horizon, allowing them to count the 12 hours of the night. Every ten days, a new decan appeared on the horizon at sunset.
In the outer panels, East 3 and West 3, the ceiling is enclosed by two images of the goddess Nut arched across the sky. She is eternity, the vast and dark space in which the celestial dance occurs. She is shown swallowing the sun at sunset and giving birth to the sun at sunrise. These two panels are further divided into an upper and a lower track. In the lower one, the boats of the decans navigate the nightly ocean, while the upper one shows the different planets, stars, and constellations, including the 12 constellations of the zodiac.
Celestial calendars
Astronomer priests standing on the roof of the temple carefully observed, measured, and recorded the movement of the celestial bodies, and noticed their correspondence to natural events (such as the flooding of the Nile, which coincided with the rising of the star Sirius near the sun and marked the beginning of their year). Based on their observations, they created calendars that regimented their rituals and festivals. These rituals regulated the activities of Egyptian society: the time to plough, the time to plant, the time to harvest. In this way, the life of the ancient Egyptians was ruled by the beings in the sky – the gods. Using the movement of celestial bodies, they were able to harmonise their society according to the cycles of nature, creating in this way the longest-lasting civilisation in our known history.
José María Barrera is a software engineer and application architect, specialising in data representation and languages. He has been fascinated by Egyptian culture for more than 20 years. An avid photographer, his work has been exhibited in galleries in Chicago and New York City, and sold at auction by Sotheby’s. He is the author of Dendera, Temple of Time: the celestial wisdom of ancient Egypt, which will be reviewed in the next issue of AE.
Further reading:
J M Barrera (2024) Dendera, Temple of Time: the celestial wisdom of ancient Egypt (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions).
R-E de Villiers du Terrage and M de Villiers du Terrage (1899) Journal et souvenirs sur l’expédition d’Égypte (1798-1801) (Plon, France: Nourrit et cie).
R H Wilkinson (2003) The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson).
R H Wilkinson (2017) The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson).
All images: copyright José María Barrera, unless otherwise stated
