The Ritual Treasury of the Medinet Habu Temple

Prof. Khaled Ahmed Hamza Awad, Professor and Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department, Faculty of Arts, Menoufia University

05 March 2023

01:00 PM

Main Building, Third Floor Floating Room (F3)

The Antiquities Museum and the Zahi Hawass Center for Egyptology, affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Cultural Outreach Sector, organize a lecture entitled “The Ritual Treasury of the Medinet Habu Temple”. The lecture is held on Sunday, 5 March 2023; 1:00 pm, at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Main Building, Third Floor Floating Room (F3). The lecture will be delivered by Prof. Khaled Ahmed Hamza Awad, Professor and Head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department, Faculty of Arts, Menoufia University. The lecture sheds light on the architectural details of the treasury of the Medinet Habu Temple, and the significant wall inscriptions depicting its role during the New Kingdom era.

Medinet Habu is an archaeological site located south of Thebes on the West Bank of the Nile. It has several significant antiquities, prominent among which is the Temple of Ramses III—one of the kings of the Twentieth Dynasty. Medinet Habu contains several monuments, the most famous among which is the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III—one of the best temples in Egypt—that was known in ancient Egypt as the Mansion of Millions of Years of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. The Temple measures about 320 meters in length (from east to west) and 200 meters in width (from north to south), and is the only fortified temple. We do not have archaeological evidences of the architecture of the public treasury during the New Kingdom era, and most of them are limited to the ritual treasuries that allow us to know some details about their types, locations in temples, and architectural layouts.

The treasury of the Medinet Habu Temple is located within the worship space; to the south of the first hypostyle hall. It was formed of five rooms (Rooms 9–13) in a good state of preservation. This type of treasury was intended to store gold, silver and precious metals; this means it was actually used to store treasures. In addition, the rooms of this treasury indicate that they were also used to store tools used in daily rituals in the temple, made of gold, silver and other metals; it can also be called the “ritual treasury”.