CAIRO, EGYPT—According to an Ahram Online report, a team of researchers from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Würzburg are restoring the Temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt. Construction of the monumental temple, which is dedicated to the falcon god, Horus, was begun by Ptolemy III, who reigned from 246 to 221 B.C. The researchers have cleaned the layers of dirt, bird droppings, soot, and salt from the inscriptions and pictorial reliefs that cover the temple’s surfaces, and they are now analyzing traces of the remaining colors that had been applied to the walls, roof, and inner chambers in order to restore them. Within the temple’s barque sanctuary, the cleaning has revealed painted scenes; inscriptions written in Demotic script by the temple’s priests; and traces of gilding on reliefs depicting deities and royal symbols. “The gilding of the figures presumably not only served to symbolically immortalize and deify them but also contributed to the mystical aura of the room,” said Victoria Altmann-Wendling of the University of Würzburg. “It must have been very impressive, especially when the sunlight was shining in,” she added. The newly uncovered inscriptions also suggest that gilded copper sheets had been applied to upper walls of the shrine. For more on the temple, go to "When It Rains It Pours."
