2,200 Year Old Paint Preserved By Dry Desert Air
Photograph by Fig Wright
Seen here is the
incredibly well-preserved, painted ceiling at Egypt’s Temple of Hathor. It is
the main temple at the Dendera Temple
Complex which was built around 2250 BC and is regarded as one of the
best-preserved temple complexes in Egypt. Dendera covers an area of about
40,000 square meters and is one of the most tourist-accessible ancient Egyptian
places of worship. The ceiling of the
main hall has retained much of its stunning original colour despite being
painted thousands of years ago. According to Tour Egypt, the
ceiling is “decorated as a complex and carefully aligned symbolic chart of the
heavens, including signs of the zodiac (introduced by the Romans) and images of
the sky goddess Nut who swallowed the sun disc each evening in order
to give birth to it once again at dawn.” [source]
The ceiling was
recently cleaned as a layer of soot had covered much of the temple. According
to Sacred
Sites, this was caused when Napoleon’s scholars first visited Dendera. They
actually founded a centuries-old Arab village directly inside the great temple
and the villagers’ cooking fires had blackened the ceilings over the years.
http://twistedsifter.com/2016/06/2200-year-old-paint-preserved-by-dry-desert-air/
