Little is known of the history of Christianity in the place, as only the names of two ancient bishops are given: Its bishopric was a suffragan of Ptolemais Hermiou, the capital and metropolitan see of the province. The area around the temple has been extensively landscaped and now has a modern visitor centre, bazaar and small cafeteria.Īfter Egypt became a Roman possession, the city of Tentyris was part of the Late Roman province of Thebais Secunda.
The team also excavated the so-called Eastern Temple in this area. In the vicinity of the temple complex a bakery dated to the First Intermediate Period was discovered by the French-Polish expedition from the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) and the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw. There are also Roman and pharaonic Mammisi (birth houses), ruins of a Coptic church and a small chapel dedicated to Isis, dating to the Roman or the Ptolemaic epoch. It was once home to the celebrated Dendera zodiac, which is now displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The present Temple of Hathor dates back to July 54 BC, at the time of Ptolemy XII of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and was completed by the Roman emperor Tiberius, but it rests on the foundations of earlier buildings dating back at least as far as Khufu (known as the Great Pyramid builder Cheops, the second Pharaoh of the 4th dynasty ) but it was the pharaoh Pepi I Meryre who built the temple. The whole complex covers some 40,000 square meters and is surrounded by a hefty mud brick wall. The Dendera Temple complex, which contains the Temple of Hathor, is one of the best-preserved temples, if not the best-preserved one, in all of Upper Egypt.
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