An independent religious building usually associated with the larger cult temples of the Late Period (Graeco-Roman) of Egypt, 747 BC-395 AD. This term, invented by Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, described the buildings attached to temples at Edfu, Dendera, and Philae. The buildings were often placed at right angles to the main temple axis. The Ptolemaic mammisi usually consisted of a small temple, surrounded by a colonnade with intercolumnar screen walls, in which the rituals of the marriage of the goddess (Isis or Hathor) and the birth of the child-god were celebrated.