Dendera Temple Complex (Hathor Egyptian Goddess) & Zodiac Ceiling Relief

It is located on the West Bank of the Nile River, south of Qena and 60 Km north of Luxor .

The Temple of Hathor at Dendera is one of the best-preserved temples from ancient Egypt, some parts dated back from 1995 BCE, but the main temple was built in 54 BCE. During the late Ptolemaic period, Ptolemy IX Soter started constructing this temple. It was completed under the Roman Emperor Trajan, as he was depicted at the walls making offerings to Goddess Hathor.

The Temple of Hathor is built in a magnificent scenic style; it also had a deep rectangular hollow to the west, it is believed to be the remains of the temple's sacred lake. It had a hypostyle hall of Tiberius, a well, a sanatorium, a Coptic church, and two mammisi.

Hathor is an Egyptian Goddess of love and motherhood; she is believed to be the wife of the falcon God Horus. The Temple at Dendera was the center of the cult of Hathor; the myth says that Hathor went to Horus in his temple in Edfu , and when she returned, it was considered the beginning of the flood season of the River Nile.

The only complete "map" of the sky of ancient Egypt was in the chapel in Dendera temple, in one of the rooms where it holds a unique ceiling relief called Dendera Zodiac. The ceiling had human and animal figures represented in the night sky; that's why we related it to Zodiac. This monument is a proof of the merging of astronomical and astrological theories of the Babylonian and Greek merged with the Egyptian cultural elements.