Temple of Dakke in Nubia

Category

Library Item

Item no

31065

Title

Temple of Dakke in Nubia

Artist / maker

Aglio, A.

Date

1820

Size

28.3 x 44.0 cm

Type

Lithograph

Location

Reference Library

Giovanni Battista Belzoni was an Italian explorer and archaeologist, born in Padua (Padova). In 1803 he was working in England as a circus strong man, and exhibiting models of hydraulic engines. In 1815 he went to Cairo to try and sell his hydraulic engines to Muhammad 'Ali Pasha, and within two years had begun a new career, excavating Egyptian tombs and temples.

Ad-Dakka was a place in Lower Nubia. The Greco-Roman Temple of Dakka, is dedicated to Thoth, the god of wisdom. It was initially a small one-room shrine or chapel, first begun in the 3rd century BC by a Meroitic king named Arqamani (or Ergamenes II) in collaboration with Ptolemy IV who added an antechamber and a gate structure.The Temple of Dakka was transformed into a temple fortress by the Romans and surrounded by a stone wall, 270 by 444 metres long, with an entrance along the Nile. The temple collapsed in 1908-1909 but was rebuilt. During the construction of the Aswan dam in the 1960s, the temple was dismantled and moved to the site of Wadi es-Sebua.

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