Paying nightly homage to Horus

The new sound-and-light show at Edfu Temple is a spectacular addition to Egypt's many fine existing shows, writes Ingrid Wassmann

The darkness surrounding the temple and the whispers from the eager visitors are quickly submerged by a masterful interplay of music, narration and light.As the show begins, the massive 37-metre-high pylon is splashed with colourful laser beams, while an amplified voice begins the fabulous story of Edfu's Temple of Horus, dedicated to the god of the sky.

This new sound-and-light show at Edfu Temple was inaugurated on 1 June, an impressive LE35 million project managed and completed in 18 months by Misr Company for Sound, Light and Cinema, headed by Chairman and Managing Director Essam Abdel-Hady.

"We added a sound-and-light show in Edfu for three main reasons," explains Abdel-Hady. "The Temple of Horus is one of the best preserved in Egypt," and he adds that passengers on a Nile cruise docked overnight in Edfu previously had very few evening sightseeing options. "This project is also a way to develop the economy of Edfu, which is not a wealthy town," says Abdel-Hady.

In an intriguing juxtaposition of state-of-the-art technology and Ptolemaic history, the show employs four high-definition projectors, three movable video projectors and 260 illumination units to create the special light effects. "We used a light-emitting diode system that has a longer lifetime, lower carbon emissions and is energy saving. It is therefore more environmentally friendly," Abdel-Hady explains.

The 50-minute show is divided into three parts, beginning at the north entrance situated at the back of the temple. Images of Horus, characteristically depicted as a falcon, and the different Graeco-Roman rulers projected onto the limestone blocks of the building and synchronised with the narration and music bring the story of the construction of the Temple of Horus to life. The building was started in 237 BCE and completed about a century later.

Visitors to the nightly show, mostly passengers from cruises on the Nile, are then led through a small door into the huge paved courtyard, where they are surrounded by the temple's colonnades, columns and reliefs and faced with the imposing presence of a colossal black granite statue of Horus wearing the double crown of Egyptian kingship.

Here they hear about daily life inside the temple, the sanctuary of Horus, and the ancient worshipping of this god, during which falcons were carried by priests to the deity who would choose a favourite and set it free.

Attention is then soon drawn to two large circles that first appear as a mass of bird feathers and are then transformed into a pair of gigantic falcon eyes -- those of Horus -- which symbolically represent the sun and the moon.

"What makes this sound-and-light show unique is the depth, the space and the different shapes available for the light to be projected onto, such as the building's colonnades, façades and walls," said photographer Sherif Sonbol, who has spent a great deal of time photographing the Edfu Temple for his new book, The Nile Cruise: An Illustrated Journey (AUC Press, 2010).

The third and last part of the show depicts Horus's mother and father, Isis and Osiris. The latter deity was killed by his brother Seth, the god of chaos, in ancient Egyptian mythology, and the show depicts the great battle of Edfu between Horus, avenging his father's death, and Seth, who is represented in many temple wall reliefs as a shrinking hippopotamus.

The show ends at the front façade of the temple, used today as the main entrance for daytime visits.

"Not many people see the Edfu Temple at night, but now they can visit it during the day and after dark," explains Ahmed Abul-Ela, a national tour guide for the past 21 years. "The sound-and-light show in the Temple of Horus is the final phase of a 10-year site management programme put in place for Edfu," Abul-Ela adds enthusiastically.

This latest sound-and-light show in Upper Egypt adds to existing ones at the Pyramids in Giza and at Karnak in Luxor, Philae and Abu Simbel. Meanwhile, another sound-and-light show is being planned for Cairo's Citadel, while the current one at the Pyramids in Giza is expected to undergo a complete makeover.