METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, Temple Of Dendur

An entire hall of the Metropolitan Museum, The Sackler Wing, features a magnificent work of art from Ancient Egypt: the reconstructed Temple of Dendur. The monument can be admired in a bright, inviting setting, inaugurated in 1978, with a wall of slanted windows looking onto Central Park, and in a refined setting, with a pool which reflects the ancient temple and the portal before it.

The temple comes from the area flooded by the waters of the Nile during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in in the south of Egypt, in 1963. The creation of the Lake Nasser reservoir required a huge, complex archaeological operation, which involved the dismantling and reassembly of a number of entire temples: some remained in the area, such as the large temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae, while a number of small temples were donated to the nations who had funded the campaign to save the monuments of Nubia: Spain, the Netherlands and Italy, as well as the USA. Shipping the blocks making up the Temple of Dendur, in 1968 was no mean feat as there were over 8000 tons of stone in 661 packing cases....