Ancient Egyptian temple to the sun cult uncovered near Cairo

The remains of an ancient temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god Ra have been found.

The cult of the sun reached its peak with the construction of a new type of monument specifically devoted to the sun god. He co-directs it with a professor at the University of Naples.

In ancient Egypt, the sun cult was a powerful cult. Amun-Ra, the most powerful of the Egyptian gods, was formed after Ra merged with Amun. The time when Egyptian polytheism ceased to exist was around 1,500 years ago.

The sun temple was made from mud bricks and was over 200 feet in length and over 60 feet in width. Nuzzolo told Live Science that there was an L-shaped entrance portico, a courtyard, storage rooms and rooms that could have been used for cultic purposes. There were traces of painting in red and blue on the walls of the building. There were two limestone columns in the entrance portico.

The temple was dedicated to Zeus.

The temple was demolished in order to make a new sun temple for a pharaoh named Niuserre. The year was 2420 B.C. Niuserre used part of the structure as a platform for his temple.

One of the deposits has dozens of intact beer jars and a few finely made and red-slipped vessels, while the other has seals of pharaohs who ruled during the fifth and sixth dynasties. Shepseskare was an "enigmatic" pharaoh who ruled Egypt before Niuserre. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City shows Shepseskare as reigning from circa 2438 B.C to 2431 B.C.

The first image of two.

The jars used to store beer were included in the artifacts. The ministry of tourism and antiquities in Egypt.

The seal of Shepseskare was found in this artifact. The Sun Temple project has an image credit.

The mud brick sun temple is believed to have been built by either Shepseskare or Raneferef.

The rituals that were performed in the Egyptian sun temples are unknown. Most of the cult rituals carried out in the sun temples are unknown. We don't have enough data to understand what daily life was like around these temples.

The 19th century German archaeologists found a small part of the mud brick sun temple. The rest of the temple was found during the last excavation. The team's website has more information about the dig.

It was originally published on Live Science