Egypt - Sunday 18th May - Dendra Temple

We are sailing north on the Nile today to stop at Qena and after lunch we visit the Dendra Temple.

It is a much more pleasant temperature today, somewhere in the high 30's. Which is what we expected and not the scorching dangerous to life temp that it was on the previous days.

 

Dendra Temple

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معبد دندره المركب

 This is the post where I'm going to try to remember some of the 

massive overload of  info on Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.

 

Firstly our lovely program director, Caroline, (below in Viking red), gave some of the group God names in an effort to help us remember.

 

 Graham was named for the God Set. Who was a bit of a nasty character.

 

 

 

 

Here above  is 'Set' sneaking around and up to mischief I'm sure!

 

 

Above is a rare carving of the famous Cleopatra with her son Cesarean.  

He is the bub she had with Julius Ceasar.

 

But back to the Gods and Goddesses.  I didn't get a goddess moniker, 

but I think I would like to be Hathor, 

I'll give myself that title! 

That is what this temple is all about worshiping Hathor.

 

 She is a bovine Goddess, hence the cow horns and the sun of Ra above her head.

 

 

 

 

Beautiful coloured ceiling in this temple.

 

 

Maybe I'd rather be the Goddess Nuit, she is the beautiful 

Goddess of the night time sky.

Here she is on 2 ceilings, I think she is kissing the moon at night 

and giving birth to the sun to start a new day.

 

 

 

 

 Above:- this is a beautiful pic.

 

Then back to the ship and we sailed back to Luxor.

 

 

The ship is named after another God, Osiris, and we just met his Mum and nasty brother above.

 

 

In simpler terms Osiris's brother, nasty Set, killed Osiris then cut him into pieces, Isis then searched and found all the bits except for his penis and then Osiris came back to life long enough for her to fall pregnant. The baby was the God Horus, as in the eye of Horus and the falcon... All very strange, a very virgin birth/IVF vibe going on here. (And I've never written about a penis in a post before).

 

Amazing, writing this post is really helping me get my head around this dynasty of Gods and Goddesses.

 

But wait, there is so much about Gods and Goddesses yet to come...