The edition of Sauneron does not provide any photographs, which, at that time, would have been an expensive endeavour and also made little sense without previous restoration of the temple walls.
These two topics are the starting point for the newly launched project, which is carried out in cooperation with two departments of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA). One department is the Documentation Center under the direction of Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, which is planning a complete photographic documentation of the temple. The other is the Department of Conservation under the direction of Mustafa Ahmed, which had already started conservation work on the temple walls. Both areas, conservation and documentation, are indispensable for an extensive and state of the art examination of the temple’s inscriptions and iconography. The pronaos of Esna will thus be the first of the Graeco-Roman temples whose philological and iconographical elements will be analysed together comprehensively on a large scale.
A first joint mission in Esna took place in December 2018, during which a full photographical documentation of the exterior walls was launched that continued into 2023 and is almost completed. First, we intend to publish a volume of the photographic documentation of the scenes and inscriptions of the exterior wall (Esna VII, probably as an IFAO publication). This volume will also include the results of the text collation efforts which were carried out at the same time. Conservation efforts were continued on the northern interior wall, exposing and recovering the ancient colouration. Additionally, work began on cleaning and restoring the astronomical decoration on the ceiling (Travée A).
Several subsequent campaigns between 2019 and 2023, which now also included the columns, allowed us to conclude the conservation work until Travée E on the southern side of the edifice.
