The ceiling with previously hidden images of 46 eagles was restored in the temple in Esna

In the Egyptian city of Esna, 50 km south of Luxor, thanks to the restoration work carried out in one of the local temples, images of 46 eagles were restored. Previously, the surface of the ceiling was covered with a thick layer of dirt that had accumulated here for centuries. For this reason, the drawings were invisible to researchers who were unaware of their existence. In the 60s and 70s. of the last century, the French Egyptologist Serge Soniron arrived Esnu to photograph the inscriptions in the temple, and precisely because of the pollution on the ceiling, he did not see and did not document the images.

The eagles are arranged in two rows. 24 of them have bird heads, symbolizing the goddess Nekhbet and Upper Egypt, the remaining 22 birds are depicted with heads like cobras, they symbolize the goddess Wadjit and Lower Egypt. The temple itself is dedicated to Khnum, the creator god who made the first man out of clay, sculpting him with a potter's disc. He is also the patron saint of the Nile floods. The religious building began to be erected under Ptolemy VIII and was probably completed under Domitian. Another find helped determine the date - Greek inscriptions on the frieze in the western part of the temple, which indicate the day and month of Domitian's reign.