Dendera Crypt No. 4: Auguste Mariette's 1871 Drawing of the "Light Bulb" Relief | Digital Download, Printable Wall Art

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Dendera, crypt no. 4, as Auguste Mariette drew it in 1871

Under the floor of the temple of Hathor at Dendera, in southern Egypt, a narrow crypt holds one of the most talked-about carvings in Egypt: a snake stretched inside a long envelope rising from a lotus, called since the 1980s the Dendera light bulb. In 1871 the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette published this wall in his Denderah, drawing every figure and every column of hieroglyphs. The inscriptions name the carving as an image of the child sun god Harsomtus; engineers have read it as a lamp. Mariette's plate lets you see both: the relief and the words carved beside it.

What you receive

• One PDF with the full plate laid out at standard print sizes, 300 DPI
• 8 x 10 in, 11 x 14 in and 16 x 20 in
• A2 (16.5 x 23.4 in)
• Ready to print at home, at a print shop or through an online print service

The source

From the plates of Auguste Mariette, Denderah, volume III (Paris, 1871), crypt no. 4, scanned by the New York Public Library. The drawing is in the public domain.