) .

The chapel was begun in the late Ptolemaic period and its pronaos was added by the emperor Tiberius.
Champollion dated the relief correctly to the Greco-Roman period, which greatly pleased the Catholic authorities of the time, who feared the antiquity to be over 6,000 years old, and therefore before the accepted biblical date of Creation.
The now-accepted date for the relief is 50 BC, since it shows the stars and planets in the positions they would have been seen at that date.

Egypt

ologists now date it to the first century BC.

What you see today at its original place is a cast.
The authentic Dendera

zodiac

is now on display at the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
The Dendera

zodiac

is a planisphere or map of the stars on a plane projection, showing the 12 constellations of the

zodiac

al band forming 36 decans of ten days each, and the planets.
These decans are groups of first-magnitude stars.
These were used in the Ancient

Egypt

ian calendar, which was based on lunar cycles of around 30 days and on the heliacal rising of the star Sothis (Sirius).
The celestial arch is represented by a disc held up by four pillars of the sky in the form of women, between which are inserted falcon-headed spirits.
On the first ring, 36 spirits symbolize the 360 days of the

Egypt

ian year.
On an inner circle, one finds constellations, showing the signs of the

zodiac

.
Some of these are represented in the same forms as their familiar names (e.g.
the Ram, Taurus, Scorpio, and Capricorn, albeit most in odd orientations in comparison to the conventions of Ancient Greece and later Arabic-Western developments), while others are shown in a more

Egypt

ian form.
The removal process
Sharon Waxman describes the removal of the Dendera

zodiac

in her book "Loot:The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World": "The engineer Lelorrain had imported special tools in France to do the deed.
Working on the rooftop of the Dendera (

Denderah

) h Temple, Saulnier hacked and gouged at the

zodiac

ceiling over the course of twenty-two days, trying to drag it down using chisels and saws.
But when more than three weeks of hacking did not succeed in removing the ceiling, Lelorrain turned to gunpowder in specially drilled holes to dislodge it.
The explosions finally did the trick, destroying a nearby sculpture of Isis."
Necropolis and crypts
The Dendera (

Denderah

) necropolis is a series of

mastaba

(

mastaba

is the Arabic word for bench ) tombs.
The necropolis dates from the Early Dynastic Period of the Old Kingdom to the First Intermediate Period

of

Egypt

.
The necropolis runs the eastern edge of the western hill and over the northern plain.
The subterranean

Hathor

Temple tombs total 12 chambers.
Some reliefs are dated to as late as Ptolemy XII Nero’s Dionysus reign.
The crypts reportedly were used for storing vessels and divine iconography.
An opening in the "Flame Room" floor leads to a narrow chamber with representations on the walls of the objects which were kept in them.
In the second chamber, a relief depicts Phiops of the Sixth Dynasty.
He holds a statuette of the Ihi to four images of

Hathor

.
In the crypt, reached from the "Throne room", Ptolemy XII has jewelry and offerings for the gods.

Dandara’s gallery

• Roman columns

capital

Bes

More Photos of the

Hathor

temple

• Horus

• vertical

hieroglyphs

, read top to bottom

• Horus and

Hathor

• Osirs suite

• impregnating herself

• giving birth

• hypostyle hall

Cleopatra VII with her son Caesarion.

• Cleopatra

• Caesarion

• figure as a drain spout
•
An inner room
•
An inner room

Column capitol of