See an Ancient Egyptian Temple’s Brilliant Colors, Newly Revealed Beneath Layers of Dust and Soot

Egypt’s second-largest ancient temple is getting a facelift. For three years, experts have been carefully cleaning and restoring parts of the 2,000-year-old Temple of Edfu—and shedding new light on what the richly decorated house of worship looked like in its prime.

Built between 237 and 57 B.C.E., the temple is dedicated to the Egyptian god Horus. It measures about 450 feet long and 115 feet tall, and it’s famous for its stone walls covered in carved reliefs, which were once painted in vibrant colors.

Researchers from Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Germany’s University of Würzburg have been carefully bringing these colors back to life. During these efforts, they’ve also discovered that the reliefs were partially covered in gold leaf, according to a statement from the university.

Experts began the restoration by removing dust, bird droppings, soot and other deposits from the monument’s sandstone reliefs. Beneath this detritus, they found the reliefs’ original painted coloring: varied hues of red and blue, per Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine.

The paint has helped researchers identify details of the scenes depicted on the reliefs that weren’t previously clear. They’ve also formed a more comprehensive understanding of the carved hieroglyphs, which Egyptian craftsmen would sometimes use paint to correct or refine.

“In the painting, we are capturing an ancient quality management,” says researcher Martin A. Stadler, an Egyptologist at the University of Würzburg, in the statement.

The reliefs’ striking colors weren’t the only paints that researchers found in the temple. The walls also sport dipinti, or graffiti painted in ink. Written in Demotic script (a type of cursive hieroglyphics), the messages are prayers to Horus and testimonies of priests who entered the temple.

“It is a very important discovery that will reveal more of the ancient Egyptians’ religious [beliefs],” says Sherif Fathy, Egypt’s tourism minister, per Ahram Online’s Nevine El-Aref.

Discovering preserved paint in ancient Egyptian temples is rare, but finding gold leaf is even less common. The Egyptians began covering columns, gates and obelisks with gold at the beginning of the pharaonic period (around 3000 B.C.E.), and historians know from ancient texts that some buildings were also gilded, according to the statement. But many of those structures were covered in thicker overlays made of copper, rather than gold.

Examples of gold leaf decorations are also quite fragile, so they rarely survive the passage of time. But as the researchers have discovered, the Temple of Edfu’s higher reliefs, which depict deities, still contain traces of thin gold leaf.

Why did the Egyptians choose to depict their deities this way? Victoria Altmann-Wendling, an Egyptologist at the German university, says in the statement that this choice is “particularly interesting,” adding that some ancient Egyptian texts mention that the gods have golden flesh.

“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,” she adds. “It must have been very impressive, especially when the sunlight was shining in.”

The experts are planning to conduct an analysis of the pigments and gilding. They will also carefully document the site and publish their findings, which will provide other researchers with more accurate information about the ornate decorations inside the temple.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.