On Luxor’s West bank lies Deir El-Medina, a village for the workers who built many of Thebes’ wondrous sites. In the Deir Al-Medina Complex you will find a small but charming Ptolemaic temple.
It was built atop the location of several earlier temple structures, built and decorated in the 3rd century BC by Ptolemy IV( Philopator) and several of his successors and dedicated to the Goddess Hathor. Even today, it remains in a very fine state of preservation.
The temple is unique as it was built mainly for the workers, it thus has some characteristics specific to their needs, it is also one of the last temples to be surrounded with a mud brick wall that still stands to this day!
The drawings and hieroglyphs are still very much intact and retain quite a bit of their original colors. Make sure you notice the papyrus columns and the drawings of Kephri baboons worshiping the sun, also note the judgment scene which is usually reserved for tomb drawings.
The complex was once taken over by Copts who turned it into a monastery giving it its modern name, Deir Al-Medina, which means Monastery of the Town.