Dendera light

Common card · No. 280338

The so-called "Dendera light" is a motif in the Hathor temple at Dendera in Egypt. According to the hieroglyphic text surrounding the pieces, it depicts statues referencing part of an Egyptian creation myth. The temple, especially its crypts, contain several reliefs depicting statues of Harsomtus, sometimes syncretized with Ra, in the form of an upright snake, emerging from a lotus flower which is usually attached to a barge. The so-called Dendera light is a variation of this motif, showing Harsomtus in an oval container called hn, which might represent the womb of Nut. Sometimes a djed pillar supports the snake or the container, other times a man with raised arms and a sun disk on his head. The crypt of the temple was considered analogous to the Duat, and reliefs in the crypts depict the cult statues (made of precious materials and thus looted or destroyed in later times) which were housed within, kept underground as the 'bodies' of the gods until they were resurrected through contact...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0