AMAZING DAY TRIP TO ABYDOS AND DENDERA | English version | November 2024

One day trip to Abydos and Dendera on November 6, 2024.
ABYDOS
Is considered one of the most important archaeological sites of Ancient Egypt. The sacred city of Abydos was the site of many ancient temples and was the burial place for the first kings of unified Egypt. Nearby there was also a predynastic cemetery with hundreds of graves.
Abydos was one of the most important religious sites to ancient Egyptians. Much like modern Muslims hope to complete a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime, ancient Egyptians would have hopes to visit Abydos, which for them was strongly associated with the entrance into the afterlife.
These tombs began to be seen as extremely significant burials and in later times it became desirable to be buried in the area, leading to the growth of the town's importance as a cult site.
Today, Abydos is notable for the memorial Temple of Seti I, who was a pharaoh of Egypt in the Nineteenth Dynasty.
The temple contains an inscription from the nineteenth dynasty known to the modern world as the Abydos King List or Abydos Table. It is a chronological list showing cartouches of most dynastic pharaohs of Egypt from Menes until Ramesses I, Seti's father. It is a list of the names of 76 kings of ancient Egypt, found on a wall of the Temple of Seti I.
The “L” shaped Temple of Seti had a terrace, multiple courts and chambers, two pylons, as well as seven chapels. The temple is made of white limestone.
The original Great Temple and most of the ancient town are buried under the modern buildings to the north of the Seti temple. Many of the original structures and the artifacts within them are considered irretrievable and lost; many may have been destroyed by the new construction.
Although there were several temples constructed here, the largest and most significant is known as the Temple of Seti I. Seti I was the father of the great Ramesses II, who actually completed the construction of most of the temple after his father’s death.
The temple contains small chapels dedicated to each of the major gods: Many of the wall reliefs inside are well preserved and the reliefs toward the back of the temple, completed during Seti’s reign, are considered to be among the finest in any temple throughout Egypt.
Connected to Seti’s Temple is the Osireion, an enigmatic underground chamber connected to the Nile, constructed from enormous blocks of stone. Its date of construction and purpose are still under investigation. The Osireion is the symbolic tomb of Osiris, created of red granite and sandstone. It was discovered only in 1902 by British egyptologists.
DENDERA
The Dendera Temple complex located about 2.5 kilometres south-east of Dendera is one of the best-preserved temple complexes of ancient Egypt. The entirety of the complex is surrounded by a sizable mudbrick wall.
To the right of the entrance we can have a look at The Roman mammisi which a subsidiary building dating to the reigns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. The meaning of mammisi is a small chapel attached to a large temple.
Dendera complex was a center of the cult of the goddess Hathor. Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. She was also regarded as a goddess of healing, and this is evident in the presence of a sanatorium in the temple complex. Here, pilgrims would come to be cured by the goddess.
The Temple of Hathor is one of the most well-preserved sites in Egypt today, and is an excellent example of traditional Pharaonic architecture.
The Temple of Hathor was built primarily during the late Ptolemaic Dynasty, which was a period of Greek rule in Egypt, specifically during the reign of Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VII.
The existing temple's structure began construction in 54 B.C. However, construction of the temple was completed under the Roman emperor Trajan. Although built by a dynasty of rulers who were not native Egyptians themselves, the design of this temple has been found to be in accordance with that of other classical Egyptian temples, with the exception of the front of the hypostyle hall, which, according to an inscription above the entrance, was constructed by Emperor Tiberius.
• Hathor temple (the main temple)
• Temple of the birth of Isis
• Sacred Lake which was a source of water for sacred rituals and for everyday use
• Sanatorium
Crypts
The Hathor temple's subterranean tombs contain twelve chambers. The crypts reportedly were used for storing vessels and divine iconography.
An important artefact that should not be omitted here is the sculptured Dendera zodiac which is a widely known relief found in a late Greco-Roman temple, containing images of the zodiac system still recognized today. In 1820 the original was removed from the temple ceiling by French colonizers and later replaced with a copy. The original is currently on display at the Louvre in Paris.