Restoration work is underway at one of Egypt’s largest temples, revealing colorful paintings, gold leaf decorations and priests’ testimonies, offering a rare glimpse into what the ancient place of worship once looked like.
A team of researchers from Egypt and Germany has unveiled preliminary findings from the restoration of part of the Temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt, where walls and columns were covered in bright blue paint with ancient carvings and gilded figures. Restoration work also uncovered graffiti written in demotic scripts that were direct testimonials to the priests who entered the temple.
The Temple of Edfu is dedicated to the worship of the hawk-headed god Horus and is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt. Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Würzburg in Germany have been collaborating to restore the temple since 2021.
A team of restorers cleared dust, guano and soot from the upper wall areas of the Barque Sanctuary and discovered some paintings that once covered the entire temple wall. The team also found traces of gold used in gilded raised inscriptions depicting gold jewelry, coats of arms and deities.
“The fact that the gods are completely gilded is particularly interesting,” Victoria Altmann-Wendling, project manager and researcher at the Horus Behdetti Project at the University of Würzburg, said in a statement. ” We find this in literary sources describing the bodies of the gods as being composed of gold.”
Ancient Egyptian columns and obelisks were often decorated with colored paint and gold, according to the University of Würzburg. However, most of these elements have been lost over time and are rarely found today. Ayman Ashmawy, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement that some inscriptions discovered during the Edfu temple restoration project indicate that parts of its structure were covered with gilded copper metal foil.
Restoration work also uncovered dipinti, or graffiti written in ink, written in demotic script (a cursive script derived from ancient Egyptian monastic script). The graffiti, personal inscriptions written by priests as they entered the temple, contained prayers to Horus, revealing more about ancient Egyptian religious practices. The Temple of Edfu contains more religious texts and ritual scenes than almost any other Egyptian temple.
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