A Certificate of Completion
At the end of this course you will be able to download a personalised certificate of completion from the classroom. A great way to keep track of your learning and celebrate your Egyptological journey.
The Temple of Edfu: Egypt and the Cosmos
with Dr Penny Wilson
6x Monday Evenings 17th November - 22nd December 2025
Times: 7.30-9pm (UK Times to join live)
We love to see you for the live lectures, but if you have to miss one, don't worry, you can of course catch up (or watch again) at your leisure via the recordings. You will have access to the recorded lectures for a whole month after the last live lecture. Recordings will be available until 22nd January 2026.
The temple of Edfu is the best preserved temple in Egypt. The walls of its rooms and courtyards are completely covered in texts and images of the king of Egypt and the gods. Built completely in the Ptolemaic period between 237 and 57 BCE, the texts, images and structure form a complex interwoven web of ideas, rituals and themes about the kingship of Egypt. The temple contains and encyclopaedia of material cataloguing everything that was known and came under the control of the gods and king. This course will examine in detail specific parts of the temple decoration and texts, setting them into their historical, cultural and religious contexts. The aim is to begin to understand the choices made about the role of the temple in preserving all sacred knowledge and the people who designed and implemented the grand scheme of the temple. The temple was part of an elaborate nationwide scheme of religious organisation and so was not isolated from other places such as Dendera, but it was above all the house of its lord Horus Behedety.
Over six weeks we will explore walls full of ritual scenes, cryptic messages, single complicated hieroglyphic signs, texts that complement the architecture and vice versa. We will seek to find out the cosmogonical origins of Horus Behedety, what was his relationship to the king and people of Egypt, and what were the contents of his house, the Temple of Edfu, and how did other gods such as Hathor of Dendera interact with Horus in Edfu.
- Introduction to the history of Edfu, the role of the Edfu temple and the building phases and fittings of the Ptolemaic temple.
- The ritual requirements of the temple, its core layout and the idea of the ‘temple grammar’. How was it all organised?
- The mythology and role of Horus Behedety.
- The relationship of Horus Behedety with other gods including Osiris, Ra and Khonsu, the ancestors and above all with Hathor of Dendera.
- The roles of specific rooms and features of the temple such as the ‘laboratory’, ‘library’, ‘treasury’, Chapel of the New Year (Pure Place), pylons, flagstaff, sacred lake, water spouts, mammisi and their role in the temple-cosmos.
- The priesthood and traces of their presence along with administrative aspects of the texts in the temple. The discoveries of new research relating to the end of the temple as a religious institution and the cleaning and restoration of the structure.
Dr Penny Wilson
Penny Wilson is an Emeritus Professor in Egyptian Archaeology in the Dept. Archaeology at Durham University, where she has worked for the last 20 years and before then, she was Assistant Keeper in the Dept. Antiquities, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. She studied at Liverpool University, where she completed her PhD, now published as ‘A Ptolemaic Lexikon’. She is currently the Director of the Delta Survey Project for the Egypt Exploration Society and field director of the Royal City of Sais Project. Her interests include religious life in Ancient Egypt, settlement archaeology and the Late period to Late Antique Nile Delta. Her publications include field reports on the Sais excavations and Delta survey work as well as ‘Sacred Signs’ an introduction to the role of hieroglyphs in ancient Egypt. eritus
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