Until recently, tourists went to Qena for 2 reasons: it's connections between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea Coast, and local transport to the fantastic temples of Dendara and Abydos. Nowadays, Nile cruisers only dock there under guard, and few independent travellers make the day trip from Luxor and use the town as a springboard for reaching the Dendara Temple.

Tour groups are only taken to Dendara on day cruises from Luxor, the boat docks in Qena's security zone while passengers are whisked off to the temple under armed guard, due to the threat of terrorism.

The Temple of Hathor

Although there have been shrines to Hathor, the goddess of Joy, at Dendara since pre-Dynastic times, the existing Temple of Hathor is a Greco-Roman creation, built between 125BC and 60AD. Since the object of the exercise was to confer legitimacy on Egypt's foreign rulers, it emulates the pharaonic pattern of hypostyle halls and vestibules preceding a darkened sanctuary.

Entering the Hypostyle Hall with its 18 Hathor headed columns, your eyes need to get accustomed to the gloom before you can examine the famous astronomical ceiling. A symbolic representation of the heavenly bodies, the hours of the day and night and the realms of the sun and moon.

From either side of the Hall of Offerings, a stairway goes up to the roof of the temple. The left roof-top sanctuary is notable for the reliefs in its inner chamber, which shows Osiris being mourned by Isis and Nephthys, passing through the gates of the Netherworld, and finally bringing himself to impregnate Isis, who appears above as a hovering kite.

The other contains a plaster cast of the famous Dendara Zodiac ceiling taken by the French in 1820 and now in the Louvre. Upheld by four goddesses, the circular carving features a zodiac which only differs from our own by the substitution of a scarab for the scorpion, and the inclusion of the hippo goddess Tweri. The zodiac was introduced to Egypt by the Romans.

After leaving the temple walk round to the rear wall, where two defaced reliefs of Cleopatra and her son Caesarian feature in a procession of dieties. The chubby dace below the Hathor crown is so unlike the beautiful queen of legend that most people prefer this as a stylised image rather than a lifelike portrait of Cleopatra.