Dissertation Project Valentin Pantale Bernadou

Les cryptes du temple d’Hathor de Dendara : étude théologique, architecturale et integrative

The crypts of the Hathor temple of Dendara: theological, architectural and integrative relationships

Subject: Egyptology (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg)

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Martin A. Stadler (JMU), Prof. Dr. René Preys (UNamur), Prof. Dr. Andreas Henning Pries (JMU)

In a series of papers, Claude Traunecker defines the crypts of Egyptian temples as rooms deliberately concealed within the masonry of the building. Forty-five temples with crypts have been identified up to the end of the Roman period. However, only ten of these temples have crypts with decorated walls. The 14 crypts in the Temple of Hathor at Dendara, arranged on three levels, constitute the reference example for Egyptologists. They were the first to be studied and defined as storing space for the temple furnishings (statues, sacred emblems, textual archives, etc.). This functionalist and positivist interpretation of the crypts remains the dominant thesis today for the Temple of Hathor, but also for all Egyptian temples with crypts by extension.
However, these spaces, which can be considered veritable books of stone, contain a large volume of inscriptions whose content, like that of the rest of the temple, can be regarded as an integral part of the canon of Egyptian religious literature. The limited number of studies that have examined these spaces, their inscriptions, and their theologies beyond the “conservative” view, have provided promising results for a better understanding of late Egyptian religion. The main goal of this thesis is therefore to study all the crypts of the Temple of Hathor at Dendara in order to highlight the theological aspects that govern them and to understand the interrelationships between these rooms, first among themselves and then with the rest of the temple.
This work will be based on a complete and updated translation of the corpus of Dendara’s crypt inscriptions, a lexicographical study of Egyptian terms that may refer to these spaces, a consideration of the architectural dimension of these rooms and its impact on the design of epigraphic material, and an analysis of the decoration using the analysis criteria of grammaire du temple. At the same time, the results obtained in terms of method and context will enable a synthesis to be made, reconsidering the vision of Egyptian crypts as a whole.