Dendera Temple complex ( Part 1 )

About the temple :

• Dendera temple is one of the most important and latest temple sites of Egypt, and provides examples of a particularly rich variety of later temple features .

• The area in which the temple is located called in Ancient Egyptian : Iunet or Tantere and in Greek : Tentyris , and is located about 4 km north-west of Qena , it was a capital of the 6th Nome ( province ) of Upper Egypt and important religious site during several periods of Egyptian history .

• Dendera temple is one of the Egyptian temples which built by Ptolemaic and Roman as a presentation for the Egyptian gods , and the temple was built for worship the goddess " Hathor " that was represented in the form of a cow or a head with a pair of cow horns . Hathor was a goddess of many things ; such as a goddess of love, music, beauty, childbirth, motherhood, household, and fertility .

• The ancestry of the temple returns to the 4th dynasty where the king " Khufu " built a temple in this place then the king " Pepi I " from the 6th dynasty made a restoration of the temple , interest the temple continued until the middle kingdom and  increased in the new kingdom where the kings " Thutmose III , Amenhotep III , Ramesses III and Ramesses IV " contributed in maintenance the temple . While the current temple and due its bigness; had contributed in its rebuilding many rulers , " Ptolemy III " had began building it and " Ptolemy XI " had completed a part of it , then the Ptolemaic rulers entered a many additions on it , finally; the construction was finished in the era of the Roman emperor " Augustus "

• Early texts refer to a temple at Dendera which was rebuilt in Old Kingdom times , and several New Kingdom monarchs , including Tuthmosis ΙΙΙ , Amenophis ΙΙΙ ( Amenhotep III ) , and Ramesses ΙΙ and ΙΙΙ are known to have embellished the structure .

Part ( 2 ) SoOoOoOn