Luxor To Dendera temple by Cruise

Dendera Temple Complex
Built beginning 1995 BCE
Denera temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor, it  is one of the most well-preserved temples in Egypt, the temple offer to visitors  an amazing model of Ancient Egyptian Pharaonic architecture. Dendera temple was erected primarily during the Greek period. However, but all the structure  was completed under the Roman emperor Trajan, that is why you can see him depicted on the temple walls offering gifts to the goddess Hathor..

Dendera area was a center of the cult of goddess Hathor.She was goddess of many things: love, beauty, music, dancing, fertility, and pleasure. The ancient Egyptians used to celebrate new year by Hathour journey from her temple at Dendera to visit her husband, Horus Ra HOR aKHTI, at his temple in Edfu, hATHOR SPEND TIME WITH HIM, then return from Edfu to Dendera, this journey back to her temple was an important sign for Egyptian as it refers to the beginning of the flood season of the Nile.

There is evidence that the first part of this temple was erected  around 2250 BCE, but most of the standing constructions are belonging to the Ptolemaic era forward. 

The temple originally housed the famous Zodiac of Dendera. This bas-relief with human and animal figures represented a night skyscape, and was found on the ceiling of a chapel in the Temple of Hathor, where the mysteries of the resurrection of the god Osiris were celebrated. Egyptologists determined it should be interpreted as a map of the sky rather than a giant horoscope or a perpetual astrological tool.

The particular configuration of the planets among the constellations shown in the Zodiac of Dendera occurs only about once every thousand years. Two astrophysicists have dated it to between June 15 and August 15, 50 BCE. Two eclipses are represented on the Zodiac exactly where they occurred at that time.

The Zodiac of Dendera was brought to France in 1821,  It currently is on display at the Louvre in Paris.