Dendérah (autres transcriptions: Dendara, Denderah, Dendéra or Dendera), located at 65 km in the north of Louxor, were the capital of the 6th names High-Egypt, and its necropolis shelters tombs dug between the predynastic time and the end of the Ancient Empire. It owes its notoriety with the famous temple of Hathor, which in its actual position goes back to the period gréco-Roman. This site is extraordinarily well preserved, with its very deep crypts, dug in the thickness of the walls and decorated with erudite low-reliefs.

Temple

According to the inscriptions reporting the foundation of the temple, its plan takes as a starting point very old documents going back to Khéops, Pépi {{Ier}}, and even of old times of the servants of Horus. The presence, not far from the enclosure of the temple, a necropolis old, confirms the moved back age of this city and its worship. Currently the oldest still visible monument is a Mammisi dating from the time of Nectanébo {{Ier}} ().

The enclosure also contains a crowned lake, the temple of the birth of Isis completed by Auguste and a church copte probably built at the 5th century in the sector of the Mammisi.

The monumental complex of Dendérah includes/understands the large door of Domitien and Trajan, on the right from the entry, two Mammisi (small temples which commemorates the birth of Ihy, the son of Isis): oldest goes back to the reign of Nectanébo {{Ier}} () and was completed under Ptolémées, while the other is of Roman epoch, decorated with low-reliefs illustrating Hathor nursing Pharaon. Not far the ruins of a sanatorium were released where the patients were neat according to the indications of the goddess. On the roof six vaults dedicated to Osiris were high, because it was thought that Dendérah was a burial of the god: the ceiling of one of these buildings represents celebrates it Zodiaque of Dendérah, but, on the spot, one can admire of it only one copy, the French of the Expédition of Egypt having taken the original which was reported later, in 1821, with the Musée of Louvre.

In the south of the temple of Hathor and beside what there remains crowned lake, one notices another temple going up at the time gréco-Roman, whose decoration is time of Auguste, the temple of the birth of Isis. The crowned lake of the temple of Dendérah, in the south-west of the principal building, was used with ablutions of the clergy and the celebration of the mysteries attached to died and resurrection as Osiris. It is near the lake that a treasure of goldsmithery was put at the day and is preserved to some extent at the Egyptian Musée of Cairo and to some extent at the Musée of Louvre.

The construction of the temple of Hathor is undertaken under the reign of Ptolémée {{IX}} and finished under Néron, with the completion of the decoration of the hypostyle big room with capitals hathoric, is roughly between -80 and 68 of our era. It one of is best preserved of Egypt and it at the characteristic to be in full shift.

Around the Naos, a gallery comprises several vaults including one dedicated in particular to Osiris with superb frescos. On the back face of the temple, there is a representation of Cléopâtre accompanied by Césarion.

One goes up on the terrace of the temple via “a square” snail slope. With the walls, low-reliefs of the procession of the priests rising. With middle height a small room in whom the procession stopped to make it possible to the priests to make all the ritual which made it possible the divinity to take possession of the statue, then they continued to go up to the terrace to the top of the temple. There a small kiosk is hathoric, where the statue of Hathor was exposed in order to be “revivified” by the sun.

Always according to the route of the priests of Hathor, one arrives on the roof itself from where one has a superb sight on the palm plantations which S `extend to the Nile. Other dimensioned, it is the desert. One always goes down again of the terrace on the steps of the priests of 3000 years ago, by a very right slope.

Photographs