Archaeologists have resurfaced a complete series of the zodiac painted almost 2,000 years ago onto the ceilings in the Egyptian Temple of Esna, about 37 miles south of Luxor. After removing centuries of dirt, soot, and dust, researchers also uncovered and restored paintings of the heavens, including Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and star constellations. A collaboration between the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the University of Tübingen in southwest Germany, the excavation is part of an ongoing effort to conserve the temple created around 250 CE.
Rarely do historians find zodiac signs on Egyptian temple walls. Part of Babylonian astronomy, the astronomical system is believed to have been brought over from Greece to Egypt during the Ptolemaic period. Images of these constellations would have decorated private tombs and sarcophagi but not adorn temple walls and ceilings.
“Apart from Esna, there are only two completely preserved versions left, both from Dendera,” said Daniel von Recklinghausen, a researcher at Tübingen and a member of the excavation team.
In addition to paintings of zodiac signs Sagittarius and Scorpio, excavators also revealed never-before-seen inscriptions, possibly hymns to local deities, and images of various animals and beasts both real (crocodiles and snakes) and fantastic, such as a bird with two extra wings, the head of a crocodile, and tail of a snake. Von Recklinghausen told Hyperallergic that the decorations date back to the Roman period (50–250 CE). Artists would have painted the ceiling in relief around the end of the 2nd century CE.
“The coloration shows that the original decoration showed a tremendous richness of details (until now, the temple’s decoration was understood to be poor or clumsy from an art-historic perspective) as well as the plethora of new, hitherto unknown inscriptions only written in ink and not carved in relief,” von Recklinghausen said.
Since 2018, archaeologists have worked to clean, conserve, and document temple decoration in the pronaos, a hall where pillars support the roof. Led by Ahmed Emam, the team has worked over the past five years to preserve what remains of the vestibule. The over 120-foot-long and nearly 50-foot-high structure has fascinated scholars since the Napoleonic era. Last May, the research team revealed 46 depictions of vulture goddesses Nekhbet and serpent goddess Wadjet. Archaeologists suspect the pronaos stayed well-preserved for nearly 2,000 years due to its location in the city center and because it was minimally disturbed over two millennia. During the 19th century, the temple stored cotton, but the temple’s materials were not extracted or damaged.
