Dendera is one of those places that makes you grateful for everything that did not happen to it. Tucked in a bend of the Nile near Qena, north of Luxor, the great temple of Hathor survived the centuries remarkably whole, and a patient modern cleaning has done the rest — lifting away the soot of ages to reveal colour no one had seen for two thousand years. Hathor was the goddess of love, music, joy and motherhood, and her sanctuary has a warmth to match. Where many temples impress by their austerity, Dendera dazzles; it is a place that rewards looking up.

Inside the great hypostyle hall, massive columns rise to capitals carved with the calm, cow-eared face of Hathor on every side, and overhead the ceiling unfurls in restored bands of deep blue and gold — vultures, zodiac figures, the goddess Nut swallowing and birthing the sun. On one ceiling is the celebrated Dendera Zodiac, a circular map of the ancient sky; the original was prised out and carried to the Louvre, and a faithful cast now fills its place. Descend into the narrow crypts, climb to the rooftop chapels where the New Year rites were held, and find the Roman birth house and the still, green sacred lake outside.

Because Dendera lies a little off the usual Luxor circuit, it never feels as crowded as the west-bank tombs, and there is room to wander. Most people come as a half-day trip from Luxor and have the rooftop chapels almost to themselves, watching the fields and palms beyond the enclosure wall. It is a temple to take slowly: the joy of it is in the detail — a preserved face, a sudden flash of original paint, the way the morning light slants through the hall and the painted ceiling seems, for a moment, to come back to life.