AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE REBORN

By removing centuries of soot, researchers have uncovered the stunning decoration of a sanctuary dedicated to the heavens

- BENJAMIN LEONARD

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 painted reliefs that still cover nearly every inch of the hall's interior.

Construction of the temple's pronaos began after the emperor Augustus' conquest of Egypt in 30 B.C., but its decoration required centuries to complete. The entrance hall was constructed directly against the facade of the temple, which had been built during the rule of the pharaoh Ptolemy VI (reigned 180-145 B.C.), one of the kings in a dynasty of Macedonian royals who governed Egypt from 304 to 30 B.C. Throughout the hall, oval cartouches with the names of a long line of Roman emperors attest to the protracted time it took to finish the building and its decoration. Construction of the hall was likely completed in the mid-first century A.D., under the emperor Claudius. It took artisans until the reign of the emperor Decius, 200 years later, to finish carving and painting the building's elaborate relief decoration.