Dr. Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, confirmed that a team of the council's experts succeeded in revealing for the first time a view of the zodiac in the ceiling of the column hall from the southern side of the Esna Temple.
He added that the team also discovered
scenes of gods and animals appearing for the first time, during the work of the project of recording, documenting, and restoring the temple and showing its original colors, which is carried out by the joint Egyptian-German archaeological mission between the Egyptian Antiquities Recording Center and the German University of Tübingen.
Dr. Waziri stressed that these scenes were not present in the previous and only scientific publication of the temple, which was carried out by the French Egyptologist Serge Sonron.
He affirmed that these add more importance to this temple and its unique inscriptions.
Dr. Waziri went on to say that this discovery will greatly contribute to increasing the flow of Egyptian visitors and tourists and encourage them to visit the temple to enjoy seeing these unique astronomical scenes, especially since there is no complete representation of the view of the constellations in ancient Egypt except for two examples in the Dendera Temple in Qena Governorate.
For his part, Dr. Hisham Al-Laithi, head of the mission from the Egyptian side and head of the central administration of the Egyptian Antiquities Recording Center, said that the view of the zodiac- that was revealed- depicts the twelve astronomical constellations from Aries to Pisces, in addition to the representation of the outer planets, which are Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.
The zodiac also depicts the so-called seven arrows in addition to some of the stars or constellations that the ancient Egyptians used to measure time.
Dr. Christian Leitz, head of the mission from the German side, said that a number of scenes depicting a number of Egyptian deities and animals, including snakes and crocodiles, were also uncovered, as well as scenes of complex creatures such as a snake with a ram's head or a bird with a crocodile's head, a snake's tail and four wings, in addition to more inscriptions in black ink with Names of divine beings.
It should be noted that the project of recording, documenting, and restoring the Temple of Esna includes works of documentation, restoration, and cleaning of the walls inside the temple, as well as fixing colours and removing soot from the various compartments and walls, cleaning the layers of soot and dirt, removing salts from the walls and ceiling of the temple and showing the original colours of the inscriptions, especially the astronomical inscriptions that adorn the roof of the temple.
The restoration team was able to show a large part of the zodiac during the work that took place during the previous seasons of the project, where the coloured temple carvings suffered, over the centuries, from the accumulation of thick layers of soot, dirt, droppings of birds and bat waste, cobwebs, as well as salt calcifications.
Those bad materials made it necessary to prepare a project for the restoration and development of the temple to preserve it and its unique and distinguished inscriptions and to preserve this unique monument that dates back to the Roman era.
The history of the temple dates back to the Roman era, and its construction began in 186 BC. Its construction took about 400 years to complete its inscriptions, when it was completed in 250 AD.
The temple consists of one column hall that includes 24 columns with inscriptions and scenes of the Ptolemaic kings and Roman emperors.
Translated by Ahmed Moamar
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