THE temple of Dendera is dedicated to the cow god¬dess Hathor whose main cult centre was Dendera. Hathor was the goddess of motherhood, fertility, agriculture, joy, love and music. She was also a sky¬goddess and a goddess of the underworld. As usual, we shall focus on a peculiar feature of our chosen temple, in this case Dendera’s famous astrological presentations.
The ceiling of the first Hypostyle Hall of the tem¬ple is known as the rectangular zodiac. It retains much of its original colour and is divided into seven bands of astrological figures, including signs of the zodiac and the fourteen cycles of the moon. There are also images of the sky goddess, Nut, swallowing the sun in the evening before giving birth to it at dawn.
The second astrological scene is the famous circu¬lar zodiac of Dendara which is considered the oldest complete sky representation in history. It clearly shows the different known constellations of the sky with its three district zones: the northern sky, the ecliptic sky – where the sun, the moon and the planets circulate – and the southern sky.
In the northern sky, one can identify the Big Dipper constellation, represented here by a foreleg of a bull, the dragon constellation shown as Hippopotamus, and also Bootes, Ophiuchus and Signus. Then, in the ecliptic or the zodiac belt, all the zodiac constellations are shown clearly as we know them today: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. Imbedded in the zodiac belt are the five planets that were known at that time: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn as well as the moon, which appears near Venus.
The most important feature of the southern sky for the Ancient Egyptians was the presence of the constellation Orion that also included the brightest star in the sky Sirius or Sothis. It is said that the helical-like appearance of this star in the sky for the first time in the year, related to the starting of the Nile flood which was a governing event in the life of an Ancient Egyptian. In the outside circle of the zodiac, we see 36 deities representing each of the 36 stars, which in turn each represents a week or Decan, with a Decan equivalent to 10 days.
Investigating the central part of the sky, we know from different hieroglyphic texts that what it represented here is the Myth of Isis and Osiris, two deity brothers, Osiris – representing the good deed and Seth – representing the bad deed the bad deed, are married to two deity sisters, Isis and Nyphtis. When Seth killed his brother, cutting him into small pieces and throwing him into the Nile, legend says that Isis collected the bits and pieces of Osiris, mummified him and brought him back to life. Their son, Horus, continued to fight Seth to protect the world from his evil deeds.
The middle of the sky reflects this story. A bull, or rather the foreleg of the bull symbolizes Seth, whilst Isis is represented by the hippopotamus. Osiris is represented by the Orion, not present in the scene. Horus is represented by himself wielding a spear at Seth.
As we can see, the temple of Dendara shows how advanced the Ancient Egyptians with in the field of astronomy. With this article we end this series about unusual functions of different temples in Upper Egypt.
