Edfu Temple Shore Excursion

Overview

A two-hour shore visit from the cruise dock at Edfu to the Temple of Horus, with a shared transfer timed to your ship and a guided walk through the courts and the sanctuary.

What to expect

• Transfer from the dock to the temple.
• The great pylon and the falcon statues at the entrance.
• The open court and the hypostyle halls.
• The sanctuary, with the shrine that held the god.
• Return to the ship inside your docking window.

It survived because it was buried

Edfu is the most completely preserved major temple in Egypt — roof on, walls standing, colours surviving in places — and the reason is that for centuries nobody could see it.

Sand drifted into the courts and the town built on top. By the nineteenth century there were houses standing on the temple roof and the structure below was packed solid with debris to a depth of many metres. That fill did what conservation could not: it kept out weather, birds, quarrymen and vandals.

When it was cleared in the eighteen-sixties, what emerged was a building that looked as though it had been closed rather than ruined. Walking in, the change from open court to dark sanctuary happens exactly as designed, because the roof is still where the architects put it.

A temple that documents itself

Most ancient buildings leave archaeologists guessing about dates and sequence. Edfu does not, because the builders carved the paperwork onto the walls.

The inscriptions record when construction started, when each phase finished, how long the work stopped during periods of unrest, the dimensions of the building, and the rituals it was designed to house. It took roughly one hundred and eighty years from foundation to completion, under a succession of Ptolemaic rulers — Greek-speaking kings, descendants of Alexander's general, building a thoroughly Egyptian temple in an unbroken tradition.

There is also a carved list of the books once held in the temple library, titles and all, on the wall of the small room where they were kept. The room is empty now. The catalogue survived.

The god's annual journey

Horus of Edfu was married, in ritual terms, to Hathor of Dendera, and once a year the two were brought together.

Her statue was carried from Dendera and put on a boat for the journey upriver, a voyage of some days, met at each town along the way by crowds. At Edfu the two images were installed together for a festival lasting about a fortnight, described in the temple texts as the Feast of the Beautiful Meeting. When it ended she went home.

The reliefs showing the arrival are on the walls. It is a rare case of a religion whose main annual event was, in effect, a state-sponsored river procession with a party at the end.

Practicalities

The transfer is shared and timed against your ship, so the schedule leaves little slack.

Admission to the temple is arranged at the gate. Two hours is enough for the main axis at a good pace, and the temple is large enough that you will not see all of it. Inside is cool and dim, outside is not — the forecourt has no shade at all. Horse-drawn carriages operate between the dock and the temple in Edfu and their drivers negotiate hard; agree everything before getting in, or use the transfer provided.