Restoration Reveals Ancient Colors of Egypt’s Edfu Temple

Archaeologists breathed new life into the ancient inscriptions of Egypt’s Edfu Temple. The ongoing restoration project revealed the temple’s original colors, as well as new insights into Egypt’s fascinating history and enduring visual culture.

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Archaeology and Germany’s Universität Würzburg joined forces to research and restore the ancient Edfu Temple. The team has restored many of the temple’s interior carvings and inscriptions to their original condition—in many cases revealing their ancient painted colors. These colors provide new information about the images and hieroglyphs that the reliefs alone could not provide, such as particular elements of figures’ clothing. The restoration also revealed that Ptolemaic period craftspeople used color to update incorrect hieroglyphs already carved in stone.

The ceiling and walls of Edfu Temple’s Holy Shrine were found to feature vibrant landscape scenes, as well as the ancient writings of priests in Demotic calligraphy. Archaeologists also discovered traces of gold used to embellish the carvings of royal insignias and the bodies of ancient Egyptian gods. Professor Martin A. Stadler of Universität Würzburg said, “The fact that the gods were completely gilded is particularly interesting. We find this in the textual sources that describe the flesh of the gods as consisting of gold.”

The Edfu Temple Restoration Project

The restoration of Edfu Temple is part of a larger effort to preserve the cultural and historical heritage of Egypt. Archaeologists are focused on cleaning neglected exterior walls and stabilizing the fading colors of the temple’s interior carvings and inscriptions. They are also analyzing the texts and imagery found inside Edfu Temple to create a new digital archive with improved translations and updated insights. Ahmed Abdul Nabi, the restoration project supervisor, said, “The team removed the dirt stuck on the surfaces, bird debris, soil and snails, as well as the accumulation of salts, resulting in the appearance of the residues of the original colours that were covering all the prominent carvings.”

Dedicated to the ancient Egyptian deity Horus, Edfu Temple dates back to the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Construction began between 246 and 222 BCE, during the reign of Ptolemy III, and was completed in 57 BCE under Ptolemy XII Auletes. When non-Christian worship was banned throughout the Roman Empire by Theodosius I in 391 CE, the temple fell into disuse, and some of its carvings and inscriptions suffered damage. The temple is located on the west bank of the Nile in Edfu, Upper Egypt, and remains one of the best-preserved ancient Egyptian temples. Over the years, its interior walls have provided important insights into ancient language, mythology, and religion.