Kom Ombo III
by Debbie Oppermann
Title
Kom Ombo III
Artist
Debbie Oppermann
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
"Kom Ombo III" by Debbie Oppermann. The small town of Kom Ombo is situated on the East side of the Nile, 45 kilometers to the North of the city of Aswan, about 800 kilometers to the South of Cairo, the capital of Egypt. While the stone differs from that of all the other temples perhaps because it was covered with sand for so long, the outstanding feature of the Kom Ombo Temple is the unusual, even unique, ground plan, the result of the unification of two adjacent temples, each dedicated to a distinct divinity: the crocodile-headed Sobek, god of fertility and creator of the world, and Haroeris or the ancient falcon-headed Horus, the solar war god.This was why the temple was called both "House of the Crocodile" and "Castle of the Falcon". An imaginary line divides the temple longitudinally into two parts, each with its entrance, hypostyle halls, chapels, etc. The right part of the temple was consecrated to Sobek, the left to Haroeris, whose winged disk that protects from all evils is depicted over all the entrance portals. This temple, too, was the work of the Ptolemies who built it on the site of a much older and smaller sanctuary of which little remains.
Uploaded
July 1st, 2017
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