The Temple at Dendur, Nubia
David Roberts British, Scottish
Not on view
Roberts traveled up the Nile in 1838 and reached Abu Simbel in Nubia on November 8. One of the local monuments he sketched during three days in the area was the small Roman era temple at Dendur. After returning to London in 1839, the artist created detailed watercolors that Louis Haghe used to create lithographs. Eighty-five Egyptian subjects, published 1848–49, included "The Temple of Dandour, Nubia." Roberts’s images shaped how Europeans saw the region and his choice of this subject may even have influenced the actual temple’s preservation in the 1960s—before the site was flooded by the High Aswan Dam, the structure was dismantled and presented to the United States by the government of Egypt. Today, the Temple of Dendur (68.154) is one of the Museum’s great treasures.
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