Pharaonic architecture in Madrid: the Temple of Debod

Someone once said that there are times when reality not only equals fiction, but also far exceeds it, which, from my point of view, could be a great argument to say, with pride, but also with great sadness, that Madrid is one of the few cities in the world, which has, among the excellencies of its urban planning, an authentic pharaonic temple, whose age ranges between two thousand or three thousand years old: the Temple of Debod.

Possibly, it is not comparable with other magnificent and surprising elements of that ancient and exciting Egypt, which moves us all and makes us dream, such as the great pyramids or even that enigma, the Sphinx, generator, among others, of the Oedipus myth. But it is a magnificent example of ancient sacred architecture, whose modern history, arguably bizarre, begins in 1960, when the construction of the Great Aswan Dam began and many of the pharaonic monuments of Lower Nubia were threatened by end up ignominiously submerged under the waters of that great artificial, five hundred kilometers long, that it was intended to create.

In a way, this situation quite reminds me of the cultural monuments and even the many towns that were also flooded, here in Spain, when shortly after the end of the Civil War, the prevailing government developed its Hydrological Plan, perhaps with less scruples than those developed for Egypt, at whose request, UNESCO made a global call for collaboration in the rescue of temples and monuments that were in danger.

Spain was one of the countries that responded to this appeal and maintained an active collaboration with the Egyptian Government, so that, once the work was completed, it decided to reward the Spanish collaboration, donating this small, but no less interesting temple, which was originally located very close to the first waterfall and the great religious center dedicated to the figure of the Goddess Isis, on the island of Filé.

In fact, the archaeologists who have examined it, assume that it was originally dedicated to the figures of Amun and Isis, without forgetting the chapels dedicated to other great Egyptian Olympian figures, such as Osiris, god of the Underworld, solemnly represented in linear sculpture. from the walls, conducting post-mortem judgments or receiving offerings.

Transferred block by block from Egypt to Madrid -as also happened, unfortunately, with some Spanish Romanesque monasteries, such as Óbila, in the province of Guadalajara, bought by the magnate Randolph Hearst, whose life was embodied in the cinema by the great actor and director Orson Welles, in a cult film, 'Citizen Kane' and transferred stone by stone to the United States- the Temple of Debod was opened to the public in 1972, having its location near the popular Plaza de España , precisely on the hill occupied by the so-called Cuartel de la Montaña, scenes of one of the saddest and bloodiest episodes of the Spanish Civil War, becoming considered one of the most magical places -if we understand by magic, mysterious, beautiful, exotic and evocative- of the capital of Spain.

The main building, with a rectangular floor plan, had a single entrance, located on the east side and had two floors: on the lower floor, the main chapel and secondary chapels were located -remember, in part, this same arrangement in the temples Christian Romanesque, where on both sides of the altar, the chapels of the Epistle and the Gospel were located - and the upper floor, probably destined - it is my guess - to house the offerings that the faithful deposited as a tribute to the benevolence of the Gods .

It also had two small portals, distributed at a certain distance from each other, forming a small avenue and in which, at least in one of them, the symbol of the solar disk and the serpent, distinctive of Lower Egypt, is still engraved.

As an added curiosity, to say that apart from the numerous and disrespectful modern graffiti that are located both outside the temple, as in the portals, there is also graffiti left by the crusaders and pilgrims during the Middle Ages, in addition to marks made by the people themselves Egyptian stonemasons who built the temple.

Of these, it is known, that just as it happened with the medieval stonemasons, they too were within brotherhoods, which bore such curious names as' Squad of Horus', Squad of Osiris', etc, and that among these squads they competed to see which one she was the one who worked faster and better.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and therefore are subject to my Copyright.