Dendera.Vicinity of the Temple.

- DENDERA -

Vicinity of the Temple

Walking around the Temple on a large perimeter, formed by the late Roman wall of mud brick, one can see a great number of smithers which are scatteres all over the territory. There are the remains of the innumerable fragments of everyday life of different owners of ancient Dendera.

The Eastern Arch (last picture of the last row) - is all that remains from the original structure of the outer perimeter. The boundary wall, built of adobe adjoining this arch from its both sides. This wall till now encircles the entire Temple Complex with all the internal buildings of various ages.

The elements of the arch structures, as well as its bas-reliefs are shown below.

While looking at the Central Arch and the brick wall, adjacent to it from the both sides, the question arises - "where is the original wall"?

From the picture above we see the raw blocks over the entire width of the Arch, except two vertical surfaces, in the beginning and in the end of it. This fact tells us, that sometime there was an enclosing wall or pylon. The amounts of missing structures is too large. Besides the outer perimeter of the boundary wall there is also the internal one. The width of internal wall is 5 m from the front an rear side of the building and 3.17 m from the left and right sides of the building.

But where are these missing elements of the original construction of the ancient Dendera? Let's try to find them on the site of the Temple Complex.

On the pictures above, we see the blocks with bas-reliefs that are form the foundation of the southwest building, shown in the last photo. What does this mean? It means, that the buildings, located around the main Temple, are apparently constructed from the block of another ancient construction. May be they are constructed from this missing boundary wall or pylons?

The evidence of secondary using of high-quality blocks are also could be found on the west side of the Temple, where are the ruins of the Roman period.

Of course, all of these construction of the late period will not give all the 100% volume of the missing structures of the ancient fortress. Something could have been used somewhere outside this historic complex, something is still burried by sand. The bounding wall of 5 meters wide, probably could be partially hollow inside.

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