The topic

The red sandstone temple of Khnum at Esna, dating to the Ptolemaic period, was one of the last examples of ancient Egyptian temple architecture ever built. Little of it survives today, but its large pronaos, or vestibule, still stands. The pronaos was decorated mainly in the Roman period, during the first to the third century A.D. Through the many subsequent centuries, however, locals built fires inside the structure, and the decoration of the walls became almost completely covered by soot.

In 2018 a German Egyptian team began a complete restoration of the pronaos. The University of Tübingen has worked on this project in co-operation with the Documentation Center of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (called the Ministry of Antiquities when the project began).

Over the last seven years, the complete astronomical ceiling and most of the columns have been cleaned, and they now appear in bright colors. During this cleaning process, nearly 200 previously unknown painted inscriptions were uncovered. These were not visible at all when French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron was preparing the Esna temple monograph series on the temple texts between 1963 and 1975.

This lecture will give an overview of the decoration of all six bays of the astronomical ceiling, which includes the path of the sun and the moon, the decans (stars that were used to measure the hours of the night), some known Egyptian constellations and many more unknown constellations, and the 12 signs of the zodiac.

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Our events typically last an hour—50 minutes for the lecture, 10 minutes for Q+A.

Alert: We do not allow recording or imaging of our presentations in any way.

The speaker

Christian Leitz is a full professor of Egyptology at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and is currently the Director of the Department of Egyptology.  At various times during this appointment he has served as a visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, the Collège de France also in Paris, and the Cairo University. 

His research interests include ancient Egyptian religion, astronomy, and Greco-Roman period temple inscriptions. Since 2003 he has led his university’s Athribis Project in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The project’s goal is to fully excavate, record, and preserve the late Ptolemaic temple complex and its environs. In addition, for the past seven years Dr. Leitz has directed the German team’s participation in the restoration of the painted vestibule of the Khnum temple at Esna.

Dr. Leitz has authored, co-authored, and contributed to a number of publications, including Chronokraten und Ritualszenen. Untersuchungen zu Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Kalenderdaten, Anbringungsorten und Opfergaben (Chronocrats and Ritual Scenes. Investigations on Interrelationships between Calendar Dates, Places of Attachment, and Offerings), SSR 32, Wiesbaden 2021. He is also the editor of multiple serials, including the monograph series Studien zur spätägyptischen Religion (Studies on Late Egyptian Religion).