Abydos
al-Araba al-Madfuna,
Sohag,
Egypt
Moonrise over the "Shunet el-Zebib,” Egypt's oldest standing temple architecture at Abydos. Egyptian site guard, Hussein Raslan, walks under a rising moon beside the nearly 5,000-year-old funerary temple of King Khasekhemwy, dating to Egypt’s Second Dynasty ca. 2700 BCE, during excavation at the archaeological site of Abydos in 2024. The only surviving progenitor of the royal pyramid complex, the Khasekhemwy Enclosure, known today as the Shunet el-Zebib (Arabic for “House of Raisins”), has been the focus of over twenty years of archaeological investigation and architectural conservation. During that time, more than half-a-million new mud bricks (shown in lighter contrast areas of the photo) have been fabricated using traditional methods and integrated into the original fabric of the monument to ensure its survival long into the future. Photo by Wendy Doyon for Abydos Archaeology, https://abydos.org.
