Esna and Gebel el-Silsila

A Roman Era Hypostyle Hall Whose Ceiling Was Cleaned Of Soot And Salt Between 2018 And The 2020s And Came Back In Full Original Colour Vultures, Zodiacs And Astronomical Registers Over Twenty Four Carved Columns Plus The Sandstone Quarries Upriver That Cut The Blocks For Karnak, Luxor And Most Of Thebes · Esna, Luxor

For two thousand years the hall at Esna sat in the middle of a Delta-dark town, nine metres below the modern street, with its ceiling and columns under a crust of soot, salt and bird dirt so thick that nineteenth-century travellers described the place as black. Then a German-Egyptian team began cleaning it, and from 2018 onward the colour came back: vultures with outstretched wings across the architraves, zodiac signs, constellation figures, registers of astronomical text, and the capitals of twenty-four columns carved as palm, lotus and papyrus and painted. It is the single most spectacular thing to have appeared in Egypt in the last decade, and because the temple of Khnum is a Roman-period building in a provincial town rather than a pharaonic headline, most Nile cruises still only stop here because of the lock. Sixty-five kilometres upriver at Gebel el-Silsila the Nile narrows between sandstone cliffs that were quarried for Karnak, Luxor and most of Thebes, with cut faces, abandoned blocks and rock chapels on both banks.

The temple of Khnum sits in a pit in the middle of Esna town, 55 km south of Luxor; the quarries at Gebel el-Silsila are 65 km further south where the Nile narrows, Esna, Luxor, Egypt

Esna's temple keeps daylight hours with a ticket, shorter in winter, and sits in a walled pit reached down a stair in the middle of the town, a few minutes' walk from the river through a market street. WHETHER THE CEILING IS FULLY UNCOVERED AND WHETHER SCAFFOLDING IS STILL IN THE HALL varies with the conservation programme, so ask at the gate - the colour is the reason to come. Gebel el-Silsila is 65 km south on both banks of the Nile; the east bank is the usual visit, access is by car and a small ferry where the road does not reach, and whether it is ticketed and staffed and whether the shrine chapels are unlocked both vary. Esna is 55 km south of Luxor by road, under an hour, and is a standard stop on Luxor-Aswan cruises - though the boats stop for the lock rather than the temple, and shore time is often short.

Esna and Gebel el-Silsila on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos