187D1970 The Metropolitan FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Museum of Art New York, N.Y. 10028 212 879 5500 FACT SHEET: THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR IN THE SACKLER WING Public Opening: Wednesday, September 27, 1978 Press Preview: Friday, September 15, from 10 a.m. to 12 noon Opening Ceremonies Monday, September 18 (Details to be announced) Location: North end of the Museum at 84th Street and Fifth Avenue. (Enter at 82nd Street, main entrance. Proceed north from the Great Hall through the Coptic, Roman, Ptolemaic and 30th Dynasty gal­ leries into The Sackler Wing.) Related Publications: Dendur Builetin/Picture Book (Fall 1978) Egyptian Time-Line Poster, postcards, Slide/Tape Cassette, Audioguide. Related Activities: Mobil Late Evening Openings: A generous grant from Mobil Oil will give the public an extended opportunity to view the Temple of Dendur on Thursday evenings from 5:00 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. beginning September 28 and continuing on Thursday evenings through November 16. The dates are: September 28, October 5, 12, 19, 26, November 2, 9, and 16. Borough Evenings: Five evenings have been set aside for special visits by the citizens from the five boroughs of New York City to view the Temple of Dendur. Organized by the Metropolitan's Department of Community Programs, the local borough arts coun­ cils and museums, the evenings have been schedul­ ed as follows, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.: September 27, the Bronx; October 4, Staten Island: October 25, Manhattan; November 1, Queens; November 8, Brooklyn. (more) FACT SHEET: THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR IN THE SACKLER WING PAGE 2 Lectures: A series of three lectures has been scheduled in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on Tues­ day evenings at 6:00 p.m. (Series admission $9.00): October 17: Christine Lilyquist, Curator of the Metropolitan's Department of Egyptian Art. October 24: Bruce Trigger, Professor of Anthro­ pology, McGill University. October 31: Eric Winter, Professor of Egyptology, University of Trier. Concert: November 18, 8:00 p.m. Hamza El Din in a con­ cert of songs and instrumental pieces from the classical and folk music of Nubia. $8.00. Introduction: The Temple of Dendur is one of the ancient monuments of the Nile that would have been flood­ ed in the 300-mile-long lake formed behind the Aswan High Dam. The Temple was a gift to the United States from the Arab Republic of Egypt (March 1965) in recognition of America's contri­ bution of $16 million to UNESCO's international campaign to save the Nubian monuments. A five- man commission appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson recommended unanimously in 1967 that the Temple be awarded to the Metropolitan Museum based on its ability: 1) to create an environ­ ment appropriate to the Temple's archaeological character; 2) to bear the cost of dismantling, transporting and reconstructing it; 3) to provide adequate preservation facilities and atmospheric conditions; 4) to provide availability to a wide public; and 5) to relate the Temple to an im­ portant collection of Egyptian antiquities. Den­ dur is the only complete Egyptian temple in the Western Hemisphere. Other shrines saved from the Aswan flooding were given to Spain, Holland and Italy. The Temple has been carefully reassembled as it appeared on the banks of the Nile, in a modern simulation of the entire temple site with a reflecting pool representing the Nile, a wharf, courts, foundation walls and a hillside of stone. Documentation for this site came from comparable monuments and from 19th-century accounts and depictions. A great glass enclosure (The Sackler Wing) has been built around this installation (more) FACT SHEET: THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR IN THE SACKLER WING PAGE 3 so that the visitor can look out over Central Park, and at night strollers passing by can look from the Park into the illuminated Temple display. Most of the light on the Temple is natural light, showing to best advantage the still-crisp, sunk- relief carvings. The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing adds an imposing full-scale environment to the Museum's fine Egyptian art collection. THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR History of the Temple Building: The village of Dendur was located on the west bank of the Nile about 50 miles south of Aswan in Lower Nubia, an area stretching along the Nile for about 200 miles between the first and second cataracts. The region had been in­ habited from earliest times by tribes periodical­ ly employed by the ancient Egyptians as mercenary troops and police. At the end of the first century B.C., the area was in the hands of local tribes who had, like the Egyptians, been conquered by the Romans. The Temple of Dendur was probably preceded by a rock-hewn shrine dedicated to two young brothers, Pedesi and Pihor, the sons of a local chieftain, Kuper, whom Rome had selected to act as tyrant over Lower Nubia. Pedesi and Pihor had drowned in the Nile and because common religious custom at that time (first century B.C.) deified those who drowned in the Sacred River, a shrine was cut into the rock on the river at the spot where the brothers' bodies had washed ashore. The present Temple building was built by the Emperor Augustus around 15 B.C. during the Roman occupation of Egypt and Lower Nubia. It is likely that he was honoring the brothers partly as a means of consolidating his hold on the tribes of the area. (more) FACT SHEET: THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR IN THE SACKLER WING PAGE 4 It is uncertain just how long the Temple was in active use, but in the sixth century, A.D., the building was converted into a Coptic church to serve the recently-Christianized area. An inscription (dated 577 A.D.) carved inside the southern door of the pronaos (first room on entering the Temple), marks its consecration by the Bishop of Philae. Cuts in the facade and exterior walls of the Temple show that vaulted rooms were added to it at this time and plaster covered up the carvings. Similarly, there is no indication of the length of time the Temple remained a Christian church. However, inscriptions on the facade of the Temple and the west wall of the pronaos seem to belong to Arab travelers of the eighth to twelfth centuries A.D. The Temple eventually lost its paving, its roofing blocks and the screen walls in the facade, but stood essentially unchanged from the time of its Coptic conversion. Although numerous graffiti of later travelers cover the gateway facade and pronaos, the Temple remained thus a vestige of ancient times as well as a record of people who had visited it in their travels and studied it at a leisurely pace. Between 1891 and 1902, a dam, built at Aswan to help regulate the yearly innundation of the Nile, caused the level of the water to reach the doors ill of the Temple . The dam was raised several times between 1902 and 1934 and from that time until Dendur was dismantled in 1962, some portion of the Temple was underwater for nine months each year. Indeed, at the high point of the flood, it was completely submerged. Description of the Temple Building: Although for the most part the Nubians main­ tained separate political and cultural identity from their powerful northern neighbor, they did from time to time adopt Egyptian cultural and religious traits. Indeed, the Temple of Dendur is a simplified version of the standard Egyptian cult temple which in form had remained virtually unchanged for three thousand years. It is thus one of the latest examples of Egyptian archi­ tecture, iconography and relief styles. (more) FACT SHEET: THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR IN THE SACKLER WING PAGE 5 The monument consists of a gateway and a temple with two richly decorated floral columns on the facade. Beyond the Temple facade are three rooms: pronaos, antechamber and sanctuary. The Temple and gateway are made of Aeolian sandstone (quarried just north of the site), an extremely friable, permeable stone which is particularly susceptible to disintegration. The pink color of the stone has been caused by wind and sand erosion. All of the wall decorations, including inscriptions, are in crisp and well-preserved relief, and appear on the front, back and inside of the gateway, on the facade and sides of the Temple, on the walls of the pronaos, on the doorway of the antechamber and doorway and end wall of the sanctuary. The reliefs show King Augustus giving offerings to more than 20 dif­ ferent divinities, including the two drowned brothers, Pedesi and Pihor. The interior dec­ orations are in raised relief presumably to catch the diffused sunlight on the inside of the building. The relief on the exterior is incised, to catch the strong, direct sunlight. The in­ terior decorations are all easily seen from the exterior of the Temple. Dimensions: Overall length of both gateway and Temple- 82 ft. Distance between gateway and Temple-- 30 ft. Gateway: Depth 11 ft. Width -- 12 ft. Height 26% ft. Temple: Length ~~ 41 ft. Width 21 ft. Height 21 ft. Wharf: Length 135 ft. Width • _ 85 ft. Reflecting Pool: Length 102 ft. (front) Width 32 ft. Depth __ xh ft. (2 side exten­ Length 45 ft. sions, each) Width -- 7 ft. Depth 1% ft. (more) FACT SHEET: THE TEMPLE OF DENDUR IN THE SACKLER WING PAGE 6 Reconstruetion: In 1962, two Egyptian architects and four masons dismantled the Temple into 642 numbered blocks which were then packed into crates and stored on Elephantine Island in the Nile River where they awaited further decision.