When King Adikhalamani started erecting a sanctuary for the divinities Amon and Isis more than two millennia ago, he could scarcely have imagined that the building would one day leave the hot and dry climate of southern Egypt. Today, however, the temple where Egyptian priests once attended to a statuette of the high god Amon stands in a faraway city, where the cold bites, and winds blow for part of the year. Since it was brought to the Spanish capital Madrid in the early 1970s, one of the most important Egyptian temples of the Western world is said to have...