The temple at Isna, which was dedicated to ram-headed Khnum and the goddesses Neith and Satet, lies about 200 meters (600 feet) from the boat moorages on the west bank of the Nile. One walks along a street lined with tourist shops, then turns slightly left. Farther left (south), beyond the temple, a fascinating covered market sells local fruits and vegetables, and carpets, dresses, and basketry. Nearby, an oldmill still grinds lettuce seed into oil, a concoction considered since dynastic times to be a powerful aphrodisiac. From Late Dynastic times until early in the twentieth century, the town was an important stopping-point on the camel caravan route between the Sudan and Cairo, and on routes to oases in the Western Desert. Today, Isna is famous especially for its superb tomatoes and its woven fabric.
Isna derives its name from the ancient Ta-senet, and was known to the Greeks as Latopolis because the Nile perch, Lates niloticus, was worshipped here. The town offers an excellent example of archaeological stratigraphy. The temple was begun in the reigns of Ptolemy VI Philometor and Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, and remained in use through the Roman period. Once abandoned, however, it was buried soon under blowing sand and the accumulated debris of the surrounding town.
Today, the temple lies in a pit more than 9 meters (30 feet) deep, dug through fifteen hundred years of rubbish atop which the modern city lies. A long steep staircase, unsuitable for some visitors, leads down to the temple floor. Only a small part of the temple has been exposed, much of it by the Egyptian army, which worked here in the 1840s, and by the Antiquities Service, which worked a few decades later. Further excavation at the site seems unlikely. It would require moving a sizeable part of modern Isna.
The temple’s façade is similar in size and design to that of the Temple of Hathor at Dandara. It stands 37 meters (120 feet) wide, 15 meters (50 feet) high, and consists of six columns separated by curtain walls and a central doorway. At the left end of the façade, the king is purified with water by Thoth and Harsiesi. Between this scene and the main doorway the god Khnum is shown with a potter’s wheel on which he is said to have fashioned humankind.
The central doorway leads into a large vestibule filled with eighteen columns arranged in three rows of six each that support a roof decorated with astronomical scenes and, down the main axis, with vultures. The capitals have palmette capitals. If one looks closely, huge locusts can be seen carved on some capitals above the floral motif. Inscriptions on the columns describe some of the ceremonies regularly performed in the539 TOP THE COLUMNS OF THE VESTIBULE COVERED WITH RELIEFS.temple compound. Some of these texts are cryptographic: one is a hymn to Khnum written with nothing but the figures of rams and crocodiles. Although the vestibule has recently been cleaned of bat droppings and centuries of accumulated filth, the walls still appear dark in the dim light and it takes a moment for one’s eyes to adjust to the gloom.
On the walls, emperors dressed as pharaohs make offerings to Isna’s local gods. In the lower register on the right (north) side wall, the emperor Commodus stands with the god Khnum in a papyrus thicket on the Nile and pulls on a huge net filled with fish and game birds. This is an especially impressive scene, well carved, with well-proportioned figures. Farther left, the king stands before Khnum and presents to him this very temple. On the left (south) wall, various Roman emperors, BOTTOM THE KING OFFERING TO THOTH AND HARSIESI, RELIEF FROM THE VESTIBULE.
including Septimus Severus, Caracalla, Marcus Aurelius, and Geta stand before Khnum. In the left rear (southwest) corner of the vestibule, left of a small doorway, the name of the last emperor to be mentioned in an Egyptian temple, Decius, who ruled from AD 249 to 251, is written in a cartouche. On the rear wall above the door Khnum is shown with several other gods and goddesses. Outside, the walls of the temple show several scenes of the king—on the left (south) side Titus, on the right Trajan— victorious in battle, and proudly presenting captive enemies to the god. Unfortunately, the walls also display large areas of salt damage caused by the area’s rapidly rising ground water. The vestibule’s back gate led to the temple proper, but that is now completely buried beneath debris.
From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a