Guide To Visiting The Temple Of Dakka
El Dekka was known to the ancient Egyptians as Pselqet and to the ancient Greeks as Pselchis. Today the Temple of Dakka is located on a small cliff, it is the only Nubian temple with a north-facing facade and north-south orientation, parallel to the course of the Nile.
Originally located 50 km north of its current site, it is dedicated to the god of wisdom, Thoth, and is notable for its 12m high pylon, which can be climbed to enjoy views of Lake Nasser and nearby temples. It is one of the most recognized temples in Egypt.
Temple Of Dakka Location
This temple is located about 100 kilometers south of the Aswan Dam in the region of ancient Nubia. It was moved from the Sebua Dam, about 40 kilometers against the current, between 1962 and 1968 due to the flooding caused by the construction of the high dam.
When was the temple of Dakka built? Who built it?
There are various opinions about it:
1- Some scholars say that this temple was built at the time of the 18th dynasty, wanted by Queen Hatshepsut and King Tutmosis III, as the two of them found here various stumps for the cult of the god Horus, to whom they dedicated the temple.
2- Other scholars believe instead that the temple was built by a king of the cloud, Akamai, whom the ancient Greeks knew as Ergamenes, in 220 BC, while others claim that the date of construction must be traced back to the period of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in 282 – 246.
What to see in the Temple of Dakka?
Dakka was a place in Lower Nubia. It is the site of the Greco-Roman Temple of Dakka, dedicated to Thoth, the god of wisdom in the ancient Egyptian pantheon.
The Dakka temple was initially a small sanctuary or one-room chapel, begun in the 3rd century BC by a Meroitic king named Arqamani (or Ergamenes II) in collaboration with Ptolemy IV who added an antechamber and a door structure.
Ptolemy IX later expanded the temple by adding a pronaos with two rows of probably three columns.
During the Roman period, the emperors Augustus and Tiberius further expanded the structure with “the addition, at the back, of a second sanctuary as well as inner and outer walls with a large pylon.”
The sanctuary contained a granite naos. The Temple of Dakka was transformed into a temple fortress by the Romans and surrounded by a stone wall, 270 by 444 meters long, with an entrance along the Nile.
A large dromos leads to the pylon, which formed the entrance to the temple. Each of the pylon towers is decorated in high relief and bears numerous visitor graffiti, most in Greek, but some in Demotic and Meroitic script.
Reliefs of cows offered as gifts to the god Thoth are carved on the naos of the Dakka temple. Although the Dakka temple was architecturally similar to the Wadi es-Sebua temple, it lacked a forecourt of sphinxes; however, its 12-meter high pylon is almost in perfect condition.
A 55-meter-long procession ran from the temple pylon to a worship terrace on the Nile. During Egypt’s Christian period, the façade of the pronaos was turned into a church, and Christian paintings were still visible here in the 19th century. XX before the temple was engulfed by the floods of the Nile.
The Dakka temple collapsed in 1908-1909 and was later rebuilt by Alessandro Barsanti, it is a curious temple to visit on your trip to Egypt.
Temple of Dakka relocation
During the construction of the Aswan Dam, south of the Nile Valley, in the 1960s, the temple was dismantled and moved to the Wadi es-Sebua site.
At the time of its removal, some repurposed stone blocks from Tuthmosis III, Seti I, and Merneptah were discovered, originating from an earlier New Kingdom structure in or near the Kuban.
The temple pylon is now separated from the rest of the temple because the closing walls of the open courtyard are missing.
How to get to Dakka temple?
The Dakka temple is visited on the trip to Lake Nasser, usually by cruise.
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