Medinet Madi - Temple of Sobek

The Temple of Sobek lies in a large hollow in the hills on the edge of the desert, approached from the plain by a paved processional way flanked by lionsand sphinxes. The core of the whole complex is the little Temple of Amenemhet III (12th Dynasty), which is of interest as one of the few surviving examples of Middle Kingdom religious architecture. It consists of a pronaos with two papyrus columns and the sanctuary, which has three niches, high up on the wall, for statues of the deities worshiped here. The walls are entirely covered with hieroglyphs and reliefs, unfortunately much damaged but sufficiently preserved to show their high technical and artistic quality. A small Temple of Anubis was built on the rear of the main temple in Roman times. The Ptolemaic extension at the south end of the temple has a number of remarkable inscriptions, the originals of which are in the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. The two pillars at the entrance to the vestibule of the first of the temple's three courts bear two dedicatory inscriptions in similar terms and four hymns, each of 40 lines, written in imperfect Greek and signed by their author, one lsidorus. The fourth hymn refers to the marvelous exploits of the Pharaoh Poremanre (i.e. Amenemhet III). All these texts reflect the variety of cultural influences to which Egypt was exposed during the Graeco-Egyptian period.