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| Temple of Khnum at Esna |
The Temple of Khnum at Esna, or Isna,
was constructed about 50
Kilometres south of
ancient Thebes, better knew
today as Luxor. The temple was devoted to the
ram-headed deity Kum or Khnum, a female counterpart, the
goddess Neith, and their son, leaving in a triad
construction similar to Edfu.
It has 3
precept entrance doors and, as
strange as it sounds, with some Inca style construction
of unadorned design, as in earlier
Egyptian times at the
Koricancha temple in
Cuzco, Peru. Although there are
older sophistications, most of the temple was primitively built during the
(Greco - Roman) period, the Greek penchant for this place likely was to do with
the fact that Greeks concerned the Egyptian goddess Neith with their goddess
Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
Dedicated to Khnum, the creator god who fashioned human-kind
on his
potter’s wheel using
Nile clay, the
temple was began
by Ptolemy VI Philometor
(180-145 BC) and
built over the
ruins of previous temples. The hypostyle Hall, as it stands today, was
constructed by Romans. Parts of the
ornaments date from as late as the 3 rd
Century AD.
In the design
of this temple
there were great
astrological imports as Khnum in a way is also a god of the universe on
account that occasionally
he is was
as a ram
with 4 heads. The ram in hieroglyphs acts spirit and as
such each head is thought to represent the spirit of a several Egyptian god,
Ra, Shu, Seb and Osiris as the four elements: "fire, air, earth and
water", all of
which make the
easy universe or
Zodiac. Khnum was also
strongly tied to
Osiris as both
were river gods
that finally got the
Nile, these gods
were eventually merged and
worshiped in a
various way.
The columns at the entry represent lotus flowers, a mythological
symbolism of the birth of Ra, the Sun
god that supposedly
sprang from one
of these flowers
at the beginning
of the creation
of the universe. Likewise in the walls of this temple are
engraved a great number of calendars, and in the cap appears a
great Zodiac agency
with Egyptian and
Roman symbols.
Two pictures of the goddess Hathor at each face of the ceiling
look giving birth to the sun, and the 37 men navigating in a boat representing
the Dekans are depicted at her belly.
Inside of the Dekans (sky divisions) are the 12 Zodiacal symbols very similar
to how they are known today.