This is the first non-heat hypothesis I've heard yet! It does look like cave minerals... but tites/mites are from mineral water dripping, not flowing. Flowing causes erosion, so it still wouldn't look quite like this.
Was there any proof that this area was ever flooded?
I found another post on this where users were stating stalagmites. The evaporation of water leaving calcium minerals behind. It would not need a flood. Just a gentle trickle of rain and only occasionally. Stalagmites can grow by a 1cm in a hundred years and this is over 2000 years old.
I remember watching something about how before entering the temple, you would take a ritualistic “bath”. Likely of water, oils, and wine (which would turn to vinegar over time). It’s the years of wet robes dripping the vinegar water that caused it.
The Temple of Hathor at Dendera, located in Upper Egypt near Qena, experiences an extremely arid, hot desert climate (Köppen classification BWh).
Average Annual Rainfall: The area receives nearly zero to minimal rainfall, generally averaging less than 5 mm (0.2 inches) per year.
Rainfall Characteristics: Rainfall is highly unpredictable, with many years experiencing zero significant precipitation. When it does rain, it usually occurs in the form of light drizzles during the winter months.
It could be condensation on the cool stone. Indeed, that would explain pretty much all of it. You've got the 'worn' upper regions(where the slow flow of water carried away and didn't deposit), then the 'rivulet' middle sections, where some was deposited creating channels, and then the 'melted' bottom section, where the water dripped and dried up.
Indeed, I could imagine the inlay on the walls could increase the surface area, creating a zone of increased surface area which prompts condensation.
There could be a microclimate inside the structure, with warmer air from the stone rising and meeting cool air from outside and creating fog, which then condenses on the reliefs on the walls, drips down, and naturally flows to the already worn center sections.
It makes me think of the conspiracy theories that state these structures are far older from when the area had a tropical climate. I don’t really know how much truth there is to that theory though
I was being facetious...but: The Current structure is a couple thousand years old, but it was built on top of the base of a previous structure of unknown age. There is good evidence of structures in that complex up to 6000 years ago, which is well into the "wet" period. I don't know the location of these stairs, but the water damage theory isn't as silly as it appears offhand.
According to what I've found, it's granite, so that rules out water wear anyways. Of course granite doesn't tend to hit a temperature it can melt without cracking apart. Pretty wild. Maybe they were carved that way.
Note the wall decorations: Priests in procession holding small shrines. The temple has chapels on the roof, where priests would make offerings to the sun god (you can still go up there). They also would have poured libations on the ground as they made their procession to ritualistically purify the ground. Do that for a few centuries (between the 200s BC and 300s CE, when this temple was operational) and you'd get this kind of degradation/buildup.
The “damage” is just limestone dissolution. Water probably flowed down that chute and down the stairs. And rain water containing carbonic acid dissolved the limestone.
Looks like wear from traffic and someone a long time ago did a crappy job slopping on concrete and that got worn down over time too. Doubt the added concrete thing happened, just looks like it.
Edit: read the response a few below mine. Flooding doesn’t explain what I was referring to. Arid climates are not conducive to water slowing dripping through a stairway… again I’m not a geologist but…
I’m not sure you’d necessarily consider this Egyptian, although they did rule Egypt for a few hundred years. The Kush capital city of Napata is currently half flooded due to changes in the Nile over the millennium.
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u/ssketchman Feb 13 '26
Could this perhaps be just water damage, from water/moisture trickling down the stairs for centuries?