This Ancient Wonder Was Buried in Garbage for Hundreds of Years!

[00:00:02][music] >> The ceiling of the hypostyle hall is supported by 12 slightly lower 10 m high pillars.

[00:00:20]>> [music] >> Only priests and higher ranking dignitaries had access here.

[00:00:33]In the Middle Ages, these interiors were filled almost to the ceiling with sand and various debris. Already then, the entire temple complex was a densely built-up residential settlement, >> [music] >> which didn't change until the second half of the 19th century.

[00:00:53]Unfortunately, the interior was still used by locals who lit fires there, blackening the ceiling and capitals.

[00:01:01]Hence, the black coating, which was only partially cleaned off.

[00:01:12]A French [music] traveler from the 18th century, Nicolas Granger, reports that the inhabitants of the mudbrick huts standing on the roof of the temple disposed of their rubbish by throwing it through holes in the roof into the temple, and the piles of it reached the ceiling.

[00:01:33]The artist Vivant Denon, who arrived here with Napoleon's troops, [music] and who later became the first director of the Louvre Museum, claimed that the Temple of Edfu served as a public toilet for the entire village.

[00:01:50]>> [music] >> But the desert sand saved the temple from being dismantled and hid the greater part of the reliefs and inscriptions, thus limiting the amount of destruction done by the oblivious and superstitious Christians and Muslims who consistently destroyed the pagan images.

[00:02:13]Some of them, although deprived of their original vivid colors, were preserved in excellent condition as we can see.

[00:02:37]From here only a few steps [music] to the sanctuary of Horus, the holiest of holies, the heart of the temple. It's located on the temple axis behind the vestibule.

[00:02:49]This room is 5.5 m wide and 10.5 m long.

[00:02:56]The walls are decorated with scenes from the daily ritual of offerings, the celebrant being King [music] Ptolemy IV Philopator, who completed the work on the sanctuary.

[00:03:08]On the north side in the holy of holies is a 4-m high naos carved from a single block of black granite in which the cult statue was kept enclosed in an inner portable shrine, most likely magnificently decorated and covered in gold. During festivals an inner shrine with a statue of Horus was placed in his ceremonial bark. In the foreground we see a modern replica of such a bark.

[00:03:36]The naos comes from an older temple and is decorated with an inscription by Nectanebo II from the 30th Dynasty, the last native pharaoh who reigned in the 4th century BC.

[00:03:48]Such granite box-like shrines were supposed to provide protection for the god represented by the statue inside them. In complete darkness, there supposed to be the exact same conditions that god experienced before the creation of the universe.

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