A Blueprint from the 'First Time'
The Temple of Horus at Edfu is one of the best-preserved ancient monuments in Egypt. Construction began on August 23, 237 BCE under Ptolemy III and concluded in 57 BCE under Ptolemy XII, the father of the famous Cleopatra. Despite its relatively late construction during the Greco-Roman period, the temple’s design consciously imitates much older Pharaonic architecture. This was a deliberate choice. Inscriptions covering the temple's outer walls, known as the Edfu Building Texts, make a remarkable claim: the temple was not a Ptolemaic design at all. Instead, it was built according to a sacred book containing plans that fell from heaven.
These texts describe a mythical history of the temple's origins, grounding it in the Egyptian concept of Zep Tepi, or the "First Time". This was the primordial epoch when the world was created from the chaotic waters of Nu. According to the texts, the first thing to emerge from these waters was a primeval mound of land, a theme in Egyptian creation myths. On this first piece of ground, a group of divine sages constructed the original temple, not from stone, but from reeds. The gods Thoth, the deity of wisdom, and Seshat, the goddess of scripture, were said to have authored the plans for this structure. The stone temple at Edfu, therefore, is an eternal copy of this divinely-authored, mythical building.