Dendera Temple complex ( Part 5 )

Subsidiary chambers , storerooms and crypts :-

Ranged around the central area of the temple's shrine were chambers where the statues of visiting deities would be placed – sometimes with connected suites of rooms for the visitor's use ; storerooms for cultic equipment such as the clothing for the god's image , incense , etc ; vesting chambers where the priests would prepare themselves for special ceremonies ; and other rooms having to do with the daily course of temple ritual .

Many temples also had hidden crypts built into their walls and beneath their floors , especially in the inner part of the temple , and examples are known in temples ranging from the 18^th dynasty to the Graeco-Roman Period .

Although these crypts are sometimes fancifully believed to have been employed for the enactment of secret rites , the small size or difficulty of access of many of them indicate that they were mainly used for the giving of oracles by hidden priests , as secret storerooms for the safe-keeping of valuable items , or had some symbolic purpose .

I - Shrine of Hathor .

II - Shrine of Gods of Lower Egypt .

III - Shrine of Hathor's Sistrum .

IV - Shrine of the Nome of Dendera .

V - Shrine of Isis .

VI - Shrine of Sokar .

VII - Shrine of Harsomtus .

VIII - Shrine of the Throne of Ra .

IX - Shrine of Ra .

X - Shrine of Ihy .

XI - Shrine of the Menat collar .

XII - Wardrobe .

XIII - Store room .

XIV - Court of the First Feast .

XV - The Pure Place or The New Year Chapel ( Kiosk ) .

XVI - Side Chapel .

XVII - Passage .

XVIII - Laboratory .

XIX - Store room ( Magazine ) .

XX - Offering Entry .

XXI - Treasury .

XXII - Exit to Well .

XXIII - Offering room .

Stairs and roof areas :-

The roof areas of many god's houses were incorporated into the overall temple structure through both architectural design and the enactment of ritual .

In addition to the stairways built within pylon towers , most temples had stairways giving access to the roofs of the hypostyle halls and inner halls and chambers , and these roof areas were used not only for matters of practical building maintenance but also in the rituals of various temples .

This is particularly well documented at Dendera , where we know that as part of the New Year's festival the image of Hathor was taken up one of the temple's staircases ( which was itself decorated with figures of the king and the gods participating in this procession ) to the roof , where there was a special chapel in which the goddess awaited the year's first sunrise .

Many other temple processions involved the transfer of the god's image ( often from subterranean crypts ) up through the temple to the roof , and thus the effective space of the temple was expanded both downwards and upwards in an obvious symbolism embracing the god's activity in the underworld and heavens as well as on earth .

References

The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt By Richard H. Wilkinson .

To be continuous ...............

Part ( 6 ) Coming Sooooooon ......