An Egyptian Temple Reborn

In the Egyptian city of Esna, a highly decorated entrance hall completed during the mid-third century a.d. is the only surviving part of a temple dedicated to the creator god Khnum. Some 100 major temples towered over the landscape of Roman Egypt, though today only six still stand. One of the best preserved sits in a residential neighborhood in the modern city of Esna on the west bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt. The temple was dedicated to the creator god Khnum, his family, and the goddess Neith. Now 30 feet below street level, the temple’s red sandstone pronaos, or entrance hall, is all that survives of what was once a larger complex. The other remnants of the temple, which stood behind the hall, are now buried beneath the city. In antiquity, the hall, which measures 120 feet long and 65 feet wide and stands 50 feet high, would have dwarfed the rest of the temple. Larger-than-life scenes carved on each of its exterior walls offered ancient worshippers a mere hint of the resplendent p ... Read full article.