Presentation
Let's go to an important place adventure travelers and Ancient Egypt fans should go during their travel in Egypt. This place is Dendera (Denderah, Iunet in ancient egyptian). It's a small town and former bishopric in Egypt situated on the west bank of the Nile, about 5 km south of Qena, on the opposite side of the river. It's also located approximately 60 km north of Luxor. Dendera is one of the most important cities for adventure tourism in Egypt, especially for cultural exchange and archaeological excursions.
Who's Hathor ?
Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both of whom were connected with kingship, and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra's feminine counterpart, and in this form she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care, and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.
Dendera Temple complex
The most important attraction in Dendera is its Dendera Temple complex, which contains the Temple of Hathor, one of the best-preserved temples, if not the best-preserved one, in all of Upper Egypt. The temple has been modified on the same site starting as far back as the Middle Kingdom, and continuing right up until the time of the Roman emperor Trajan. The existing structure began construction in the late Ptolemaic period, and the hypostyle hall was built in the Roman period under Emperor Tiberius.
The sculptured Dendera zodiac (or Denderah zodiac) is a widely known relief found in a late Greco-Roman temple, containing images of Taurus (the bull) and the Libra (the balance). A sketch was made of it during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt. In 1820 it was removed from the temple ceiling by French colonizers and replaced with a fake. There is controversy as to whether they were granted permission by Egypt's ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, to do so, or whether they stole it. The real one is now in the Louvre.
Hathor Temple has a relief sometimes known as the Dendera light because of a controversial fringe thesis about its nature. The Dendera light images comprise five stone reliefs (two of which contain a pair of what fringe authors refer to as lights) in the Hathor temple at the Dendera Temple complex located in Egypt. The view of Egyptologists is that the relief is a mythological depiction of a djed pillar and a lotus flower, spawning a snake within, representing aspects of Egyptian mythology.