Temple Of Edfu Research Paper

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The temple of Edfu is an ancient Egyptian temple located in Aswan city on the west bank of the Nile river. It was built in the ptolemaic period between 237 and 57 BC by the Egyptians, under the rule of king Alexander, who was from a Greek family that ruled Egypt for three centuries. The architect of this temple is Imhotep, who is known for designing the famous step pyramid in Saqqara. It is considered to be one of the eldest and largest temples of the Ptolemaic period (Lloyd et al.169). The temple was built to worship one of the main five gods in Egypt, Horus. I chose to talk about this temple because I have always appreciated Ancient Egyptian culture, architecture, and art. It is amazing for me that I had the opportunity to live in Egypt …show more content…

It is 37 meters high with stone walls that concave and have roll moldings (Lloyd 169). The door of this gate was made of cedar wood, which was decorated with bronze and gold and topped by a winged sun disk, which represents Horus and the decorated battle scenes of the king of Edfu fighting enemies of Horus. The gate is followed by a large courtyard “ The Hall of the Masses”. The large courtyard consists two rows of columns on opposing sides, and this hall was open to the public. Through the entrance in the middle of the ecentric courtyard is the grand colonnade, which consists of eighteen columns with floral crowns. These include columns of the façade and massive columns arranged in three rows. Each row consists of three columns on each side of the middle path. In total there are thirty-two columns within the courtyard in the form of floral and palm leaves (Smith 153). The Ancient Egyptians admired two sacred plants, the lotus flower and the papyrus plant. These two plants is what inspired them to build the grand columns in their temples whilst taking the shape of them. The old form of the columns made no use, until they were changed to two styles: first, the full blown bell-shaped papyrus capital decorated with vertical plant ribs, leaves, and floral ornament in finely graded relief. Second, large semicircular papyrus blooms arranged to form a circle in the upper part and interlaced below with smaller …show more content…

. The legend of the sun-winged disk was laid on the walls of the temple of Edfu, where it was said that the god Ra Hor of the Lord charged him with conquering the rebels who revolted against him, headed by the idol of six, while sailing in the land of Nubia in 363 and pursued them from the south to the north. Horus defeated them in several locations in the Nile, especially the scarcity and Fayoum to follow them to the country of Nubia and there turned to the sun has wings and defeated them, rejoice so Ra Hor and ordered that the sun be winged

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