The blue ceiling
Painted stars and zodiac.
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One of the best-preserved temples of ancient Egypt, devoted to Hathor, goddess of love, music and joy, on the west bank of the Nile near the city of Qena. The main temple standing today dates from the late Ptolemaic and Roman eras, built over older temples, and a massive mud-brick wall surrounds it. Its finest space is the great hypostyle hall, with huge columns crowned by Hathor's face and a blue ceiling painted with stars, zodiac signs and the sky goddess Nut, cleaned of soot in recent years so its bright colours have returned. The temple has narrow underground crypts with well-kept reliefs, and a stairway climbing to the roof and its chapels of Osiris. The ceiling of one of those chapels held the famous Dendera zodiac, taken to the Louvre in Paris in 1821; visitors today see a copy in its place. On the temple's rear wall is a large relief of Queen Cleopatra VII with her son Caesarion. A foreign visitor's ticket costs about three hundred Egyptian pounds, the ministry list adds a roof ticket of about one hundred, and it opens from seven to five. It is usually paired with the temple at Abydos on a day trip from Luxor.
Painted stars and zodiac.
The rear wall relief.
The Osiris chapels.
Dendera, Qena, about sixty kilometres north of Luxor
No, the original was taken to the Louvre in 1821, and a copy sits in its place on the roof chapel's ceiling.