Address: El Horeya Avenue (In front of Sharq district Department, next to the Latine Church)

Visit Hours: From 9 am till 5 pm

No Ticket Fares/ Free Entry

El Ras El Soda Temple is one of the Roman monuments found in Alexandria. Its architectural structure indicate that this temple dates back to the mid second century AD. Its small size also shows that it was a private not a public temple. It consists of a staircase, which leads to a platform with four lonic columns made of white marble. In the middle of the platform stood a nicely carved foot on a pedestal with a Greek inscription, which shows that Isidorus, a charioteer, and one of Alexandria’s wealthy residents fell down and broke his foot. When he recovered, he built this temple. The temple was probably dedicated to Isis, the principal goddess in the temple, since her statue was much bigger than the other statues found on a sort of stand built at the end of the platform.

This temple was discovered accidentally in 1936 while removing sand from the site in the district of El Ras El Soda (east of Alexandria) on the road leading to Abu Qir. It had been moved in front of the Sharq district department in the late nineties. 

The temple consists of two floors; it was designed in such a way so that the ground floor may be used for worship and the upper floor, which lies in the northern part of the temple, was used as residence. The main room is a square room that can be also reached by a staircase on the eastern wall of the temple. In this room, there is a big mastaba (bench) made of limestone on top of which there are five white-marble statues for the gods and godesses of the temple and they are from east to west: Isis, two statues for Osoris and two sphinxes near a small altar. The upper part of the temple which is the residence area has two remaining rooms and they are probably the same age as the temple itself. In one of these rooms, remains of the marble borads that used to cover the floor were found and there are indications that there were other rooms in the place that were probably used for food storage. There are also indications of a small canal and two clay pots used for carrying water and remains of another staircase that seems from its structure that it was added to the temple in a later age. The contents of the temple were carried to the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. They include statues for godess Isis, Harboqrat, Hermanubis and Osiris and a carved foot on a white marble pedestal with a nine-line Greek inscription that reads, “Isidorus presented this foot to the godess who protected him after a fatal fall from his chariot.” The meant goddess is Isis because her statue is the biggest among the other statues in the temple.