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The Augustan temple
The oldest part of the temple is the northern part, known as the “Augustan temple”. The first
room, the sanctuary, the facade and the central gates leading to rooms 2 and 4 were decorated
during the reign of Augustus (30 BC – 14 AD). The cult relief on the rear wall of the temple was also
decorated during this period (de Meyer and Minas-Nerpel 2012, 2).
A red-brick floor was uncovered against the rear wall of the temple. Underneath, a row of column
bases was discovered. These indicate that a small roofed portico had originally existed in the
center of the rear wall. A portico is a roofed colonnade, most commonly built at the front of a
building, like a porch. In Shenhur the portico was supported by two columns and covered the
central cult relief created during the reign of Augustus. The holes that support the roof beams of
the construction do not cut through relief decoration, which indicates that these beams had been
planned from the start (de Meyer and Minas-Nerpel 2012, 5).
Construction methods
The Augustan temple was built with inferior limestone containing fossil inclusions. The hypostyle
hall, pronaos and lateral chapel were built of better quality limestone. Limestone was one of the
two most commonly used materials for temple building, the other being sandstone. It was slightly
heavier than sandstone and was mostly found in the areas of Tura in the north, at Gebelein near
Thebes and at a few locations along the Nile in between these points (Wilkinson 2007, 40-41; de
Meyer and Minas-Nerpel 2012, 4).
Sandstone was present in the northern Tura region as well and in the south at Gebel Silsila, as well
as in Aswan and further south. This explains why the temple of Taffeh and Dendur were made of a
different material than the temple of Shenhur. Sandstone was the major stonetype used from the
mid-18th dynasty as Egyptians believed it was more impervious to floods compared to limestone
(Wilkinson 2007, 40-41).