Edfu Temple Egypt

 

Edfu Temple Egypt 

On   thursday 24 th february  our Nile cruise had stopped in Edfu famous for a 250 BC Egyptian archeological find of an ancient temple .

It was built in Ptolemaic period between 250 to 57 BC  by the emperors Ptolemy III to Ptolemy XII Auletus .

It was a temple  to  the Egyptian God Horus and was discovered in 16 th century by a French archeaologist Augustus Marrittte in 1860 from under earth on excavation .

Its one of the best preserved temples of Egypt .

The archeologist found an altar which may have belonged to an earlier temple around 1000 BC  it had a boat full of treasures ,gold coins ,emeralds he promptly took it to France keeping a replica here ,its now at the Louvre museum in Paris .

The temple itself was grand with sandstone etchings depicting the Gods and Godesses the kings and queens thier offerings for the making of the temple etc .

Huge collonades of pillars supported the high ceilings fully etched with figuirines and motifs .

Many of the ceilings were blackened mostly its said due to coptic Christians in early AD hiding from Roman soldiers who had by then conquered Egypt and were ruling it ,at those times Romans were not christians amd used to persecute them .

So the coptic christians hid from the Roman soldiers in such monuments and used to cook food inside causing black ceilings .

They also destroyed the faces and legs of many of the Gods in the walls as they still feared the Gods whom they felt would harm them for turning christians and by blinding them ,removing legs in the  etchings they felt safer .

Later Christianity became official  Roman religion and since Rome was ruling Egypt then it tried to destroy the temple etchings by using fire and hence burnt ceilings ,it destroyed the etchings and temple was abandoned and slowly with time got buried in sand amd alluvia from Nile floods till the French archeologist unearthed it .

The temple entry ticket was 180 Egyptian Pounds around 400 INR  and it included a horse cart ride to site from cruise of course one needed to tip the poor driver around 10 pounds each ie Rs 30 only .

It was a nice small outing .

We stopped in noon at Esna another intresting place by evening we should reach Luxor .

We had the hot air baloon scheduled at dawn next day and then visit to Luxor temples on both banks .

We would  leave the  cruise on saturday visit some more of luxor and take our overnight train to Cairo .

Two more days in Cairo we would fly back to Cochin via Doha .