Temple of Horus, Edfu
About
Egypt's most complete temple sits in the middle of Apollonopolis Magna, its pylon towers rising thirty-six metres over the town. Work ran from 237 to 57 BCE, and the walls carry the fullest surviving account anywhere of how an Egyptian temple was founded, consecrated and run. The falcon god Horus of Behdet lives here, in a polished granite shrine older than the building around it. Once a year his image travels downriver to meet Hathor of Dendera; priests stage the killing of Seth as a hippopotamus in front of the crowd. In 117 CE the rituals are still kept, in Egyptian, by Egyptian priests.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (Moralia) 50
Plutarch describes the custom at Apollonopolis (Edfu) of hunting and ritually killing crocodiles every year and casting the carcasses down opposite the temple, explained through the myth of Typhon (Set) escaping Horus in crocodile form.
Sources
Nearby
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