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The Serabit Expedition of 1930: III. The Temple of Hathor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
Extract
On one of the relatively flat projections of the plateau which forms the top of the mountain of Serabit el-Khadim, three days’ journey by camel from the nearest point of the coast into the interior of the peninsula of Sinai, stand the ruins of the Temple of Hathor. Near it are turquoise mines exploited by the Egyptians from the third to the eighteenth dynasties, and probably also worked intermittently by the local tribes. But the mines were not the raison d'être of the temple, although the goddess of the temple was certainly worshipped by the miners. In the Wadi Maghara also there are Egyptian turquoise mines, and until they were either destroyed or taken away to museums there were inscriptions, carved to record Egyptian expeditions to them. But there is no temple at Maghara.
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- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1932
References
1 See plate I.
2 See plates II, V.
3 The first indication of Egyptians on Serabit is a hawk of Snefru, the last king of dynasty III, but the earliest extant parts of the temple belong to dynasty XII. Until the time of Rameses VI inscriptions on stelae and parts of the temple continued to be cut. Then they abruptly cease. Not a trace of any further Egyptian interest in the place can be found.
4 One inscription mentions fifty ‘people of the temple of Amen’ as part of the expedition. What were their tasks?
5 These are very like the shrine described by Petrie on the road from the temple, and also one cut in the side of the hill below Room J, which Petrie believes earlier than most of the temple as it is now. See plate V.
6 See plate V.
7 See plate VI.
8 See plate II.
9 See plate III.