Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs - Mummies,tombs and Treasures

Mummies,tombs and treasures.

One of the great momentums of ancient Egypt-and one of the most studied-is the 3,400 year old Luxor Temple, 450 miles up the Nile from Cairo. After decades of intense scrutiny by archaeologists and scholars from around the world,the site seemed to all intents and purposes just about exhausted. The only major challenge remaining was to protect the temple from the inroads of modern civilizations. In 1989, inspectors from the Egyptians Antiquities Organization (EAO),alarmed that seepage from Luxor's sewer system and the Nile might be threatening the momentum's foundations,arranged for soil samples to be taken to determine the extent of the problem. Workers had dug only a few feet into the temple courtyard when they uncovered a statue lying on its side: soon they had unearthed two more. The inspectors recognized a momentous find and had the hole filled pending instructions from their Cairo headquarters on how to proceed.The EAO put the director of Luxor antiquities in charge of the excavation, and the digging resumed. The excited workers soon turned up an additional 21 figures-all in excellent condition. Among them was a magnificent eight foot tall standing figure. The inscription revealed that the subject was none other than Amenhotep III, the king who had built the temple and had reigned between 1391-1353 BC when Egyptian power, having reached its zenith,extended all the way from today's Sudan to modern Iraq. Examining the Kings statue , experts pronounced it one of the most valuable single pieces of sculpture ever to emerge from the soil of Egypt. Some went so far as to say that the discovery of the two dozen masterpieces, dating from Egypt's golden age, equals in archaeologic importance the finding of Tutankhamen's tomb 67 years earlier.