The Temple of Dendur is a must-see in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Hundreds of tourists check out this Ancient Roman-era Egyptian building every day, where it stands in an enormous glass-walled room, surrounded by a huge moat of water evocative of the Nile River from whence it originally came.
The Temple of Dendur was commissioned by Egypt’s new conqueror, the Roman Emperor Augustus, and it was finished in 10 BCE. As you can see from these photos, there was very little “Roman” about the temple — the architecture is Egyptian, as is the artwork decorating it. Even the deities to whom Dendur was dedicated were Egyptian and even Nubian (the common term for the part of Africa birth of Sudan and south of Egypt): the three most important were the Goddess Isis and the deified brothers Pedesi and Pihor from Nubia.
You can see carvings of Augustus giving offerings to deities on the Temple’s walls. In the lower left picture, you can see how art historians using their knowledge of ancient painting pigmentation put lights that fade in and out to show what the walls used to look like. Augustus is dressed like a ruling Egyptian, and this was quite intentional on his part.
Egypt was the biggest cash- and- crop haul that Augustus won during the long civil wars that coincided with his rise to power. A brilliant strategist, Augustus realized that changing the political structure of his newly conquered territories as little as possible would mean less chance the Egyptians would revolt. The Temple of Dendur was on the borderlands of Egypt and Nubia, so by featuring himself giving tribute to the deities of these areas while dressed like a local, Augustus aimed to ingratiate himself with his African subjects. (Spoiler alert: it worked and Egypt was Rome’s breadbasket for centuries.)
