Edfou

- EDFOU-

Edfou - is the city on the west bank of the Nile river. About 100 km to the south of Luxor. The city is famous for the ancient Egyptian Temple of Horus, located there. The Temple of Horus is 137 meters long and 79 meters wide. The height of pylons is 36 meters. This Temple is the second largest one after Karnak Temple.

In December 2011, our expedition visited the Temple of Horus for the first time. Our aim was to identify the similar architectural and construction features with the Temple of Hathor in Dendera. Edfu Temple complex represents a great interest and requires a detailed study of each element, from the inscriptions and stone-carvings, up to the architectural roof constructions and underground crypts. To examine everything at once - was really an impossible task. Therefore, we decided to study each individual part of the building in a greater detail. Thus, during the expedition December-2012, the special attention was paid to the underground crypts.

Results of some basic measurements:

Walls angle - 85 87°
The width of the doorways - 1,29 -1,34 m
The width of the central arch - 1.67 m
General background radiation - 10 mR / h
The orientation of the inside part of the Temple - to the magnetic North
The orientation of the outside part of the Temple (Colonnade) - 3° to the West
The orientation of the central pylons - 2° to the East

Before we penetrate into the underground part of the Temple of Horus (the son of Isis and Osiris), lets look around its basic interior.

Welcome to Edfou!

Crypts

Now, lets take a journey into the "invisible" part of the Temple.

(For ease of orientation, we give you a cheme of the Temple. The crypts, we visited, are numbered 1, 2, 3, and marked yellow.)

From video we see, that there is no any inscriptions and carvings on the walls of the crypt. But we see well-processed wall surfaces and perfectly fitted together sandstone blocks of the Temple masonry.

In order to see the crypt structures in detail - below are the pictures of the main components of the underground constructions.

Let us enter each of the crypt separately.

Crypt № 1 in the floor.

For better orientation inside the crypt, see the scheme below. The arrows indicate the direction in which the pictures were taken. "Level 1-4" - floor levels. Click on the camera icon to get a picture from the corresponding place.

Crypt № 2 in the floor.

Click on the camera icon to get a picture from the corresponding place.

The first three photos of the last row shows the dead-end wall of the crypt. It has a small man-made hole. Who did it, when and for what purposes - hard to suggest. Anything is seen behind it. But the fresh air is coming throug the hole and bats are flying out to the light. This fact suggests that there is one more room in the original masonry of the crypt.

Crypt № 3 in the wall.

Click on the camera icon to get a picture from the corresponding place.

The photos below are showing the descent into the shaft, leading to the room, located below the first level of the crypt. The room has a dead end with two niches shown in the first three pictures of the first row.

On the pictures below, there is the main gallery of the crypt.

The ideal design solutions and skills of the ancient builders of the Temple of Horus, deserves the deepest respect, but do not add any clarity to the purposes of these crypts.

Inconvenience to move, lack of ventilation, high precision of engineer designs - demands the attention of researchers and engineers.

For now, the only inhabitants of the crypts are the bats, scared by our visit.

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