From the Magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America comes the jaw-dropping chronicle of an Egyptian temple, once covered in dirt and soot, that’s now revealing an ancient creation myth and the cult that worshiped it.

Located far in the south, confusingly called “Upper Egypt” on the west bank of the Nile, the Temple of Khnum has survived since the time of Cleopatra. Recently undergoing extensive restoration work, colors, painted inscriptions, and beautiful carvings cover every inch of the structure.

Even while Egypt was ruled by Macedonian Greek kings playing pharaoh, the locals continued to worship ancient, but also local deities. In the modern city of Esna, these were Khnum, a ram-headed god of creation, and his wife Neith.

They were honored to preside over a temple that is now in ruins 30 feet below the level of the street. However, in the year 30 BCE when the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, took control of the country, work began on an impressive red sandstone ‘pronaos,’ or entrance hall, the remains of which are extremely well intact and measure 120 feet long, 65 feet wide, and 50 feet high.

It’s believed the pronaos would have dwarfed the temple itself—built 300 years before. 200 years passed before the columns, walls, and ceilings were finished being decorated. The scenes thereupon occasionally depict some of the Roman emperors who came and went during this long exercise in inter-generational artistry.

For 1,500 years, the pronaos existed merely as a shelter from weather while the temple behind it was dismantled to build canals. In the 19th century it became a storehouse for cotton and gunpowder.

Over those long years, the soot from fires lit in the interior gradually covered the ceilings, while bacteria glommed together dust and sand which obscured the inscriptions and drawings.

Some of these were cleaned and documented in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until a major cleaning was undertaken, beginning in 2018, that the wealth of iconography and artistry could truly be comprehended.

Center of creation

A joint Egyptian-German team, led by Egyptologist Christian Leitz of the University of Tübingen and Hisham El-Leithy and Ahmed Emam from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, have now cleaned virtually the entire pronaos, and what they uncovered is nearly unique in Egyptian religious architecture.

“Now this vivid decoration can be studied in combination with the temple’s architectural layout, something that could not have been attempted until recently,” El-Leithy told Benjamin Leonard, senior editor of Archaeology Magazine, which published an incredible feature story on the deciphering of the various images and inscriptions. 

The pronaos welcomed worshipers into the temple of Khnum, a god of creation whose worship first appears in the hieroglyphic record around 4,000 BCE. By the time of the New Kingdom, (1550–1070 BCE), his appearance and profile had expanded to involve fertility and the Nile, and was depicted occasionally with a crocodile head as well as that of a ram’s.

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He is written to have created all things in the world on a potter’s wheel—a tenant captured in a striking mural wherein the Roman Emperor Trajan is depicted as presenting incense sticks whilst a priest in leopard skin below him offers the god a potter’s wheel.

Also at Esna, he is referred to as Khnum-Ra, showing how regional worship involved co-opting other deities, in this case by appropriating the name and perhaps the duties of the greater understood sun god Ra. Exquisite columns at the entrance of the pronaos, and much of the interior besides, are colored in red and yellow along the theme of sunlight.

But Khnum doesn’t reign alone in Esna. Hieroglyphic inscriptions record him having a spouse—Neith. Together they’re referred to as the “Lord and Lady of Esna.” Neith is referred to as the “mother of mothers,” in a nod to her perhaps co-equal role as creator.

“Both these deities are responsible for the creation of a whole universe,” Tübingen’s Egyptologist Daniel von Recklinghausen, told Leonard. “You find this idea of creation everywhere in the temple.”

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All over the walls of the building, aspects of classical Egyptian life are highlighted with gorgeous colors, inscriptions, and paintings. In one area, images and hieroglyphics combine to explain how rituals were carried out at the temple. Around 90 days of the year there were feasts and rites to honor the gods.

In one stunning image, a procession carries the shrine of Khnum aboard a mythical sun boat out from the mouth of the pronaos.

Another collection of images on the ceilings bears witness to the Egyptians’ adoption of the twelve zodiac symbols first used in ancient Babylon. All twelve are depicted, separated in groups of six, along with all of the 7 planets known in antiquity.

Leitz and von Recklinghausen suspect there are many more connections between the positioning of texts and images that have yet to be discovered.

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“I’ve been quite astonished at the numerous cases of these interactions,” Leitz tells Archaeology Magazine. “I didn’t expect it, and, at the moment, we don’t know whether this might have been repeated in any other temple in Egypt.”

It has taken six years for the team led by Leitz and El-Leithy to clean the temple of Khnum’s extraordinary entrance hall. Only 6 pillars and two interior walls remain unclean, a job to which Leitz ascribes about 18 months of necessary work—suggesting that even more marvels may emerge from the sands and soot of time.

Read the story on Archaeology Magazine and see the beautiful pictures of the interior artwork.

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