The temple in ancient Egypt was the home of the deity it was built for, and the clergy attended the statue of that god or goddess as they would a living person. Every temple was designed with a forecourt, a reception area for public gatherings, and an inner area, which included the Holy of Holies where the god lived.
This room, which housed the statue of the god, could only be entered by the high priest who would commune with the deity and intercede for the king and people. Each temple was understood as the point at which that god or goddess had come into the earthly plane in the earliest times and so were linked with the ancient past, no matter when they were built. They were also designed to represent the ben-ben, the primordial mound of earth, which rose from the watery chaos at the beginning of time and upon which the god Amun stood to create the world. Exceptions to this paradigm are mortuary temples dedicated to monarchs, as in the case of Hatshepsut, but even these were constructed with the gods in mind.
This gallery presents a sampling of some of the best-known and lesser-known temples of ancient Egypt (most from the New Kingdom, c. 1570 to c. 1069 BCE) along with images of some of the gods worshipped. The only exception to this is the god Bes who is thought to have had, at most, one temple dedicated to him but was sometimes venerated at temples or shrines dedicated to the goddess Hathor, as at her birth house in Dendera.
