LUXOR: Towering like sentries above the necropolis of Ancient Thebes in southern Egypt, the world-famous Colossi of Memnon will see their number double from two to four from next year.
The painstaking work of 12 archaeologists and hundreds of workers is about to redefine the way visitors see and understand this mysterious site that has cast its spell over travelers for more than 2,000 years.
It will be sensational, that s for sure! Hourig Sourouzian, the project s enthusiastic director, enthused to AFP.
Next year two giant statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep III will begin to rise again, just a hundred meters behind his two existing colossi that mark the entrance to the temple.
Another two statues, still half-buried, will also be returned to their former upright position in the years to come.
Rising from green fields, the two 18-meter-high stone giants seem to be watching over roads leading to the temples and Pharaonic tombs built in the valleys and ochre mountains of Luxor s west bank.
The statues are all that remains of the funerary temple of 18th dynasty Amenhotep who ruled from 1391 to 1353 BC. He was the father of the iconoclastic pharaoh Akhenaton.
Rises in the water level of the River Nile, pillaging of the stone by other Pharaohs and a 27 BC earthquake all took their toll of the temple at Kom El-Hitan whose builders meant it to last a million years.
But when what is left of the site began to suffer 10 years ago because of encroachment from irrigation works in neighboring fields, renowned Armenian archaeologist Sourouzian decided to save it.
She worked with her husband Rainer Stadelmann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute who was responsible for creating the site s first photogram metric pictures – three-dimensional maps made from two-dimensional pictures.
Emergency measures were set in place at the site and enforced by the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
In 1998 and 2004, the Luxor temple was listed as one of the world s 100 most endangered sites by the World Monuments Fund, an international NGO based in New York, and funding was provided to help save it.
French Egyptologist Alain Fouquet created the Association of the Friends of the Colossi of Memnon, which was generously funded by Monique Hennessy from the famous cognac family.
Ursula Lewenton s Forderverein Memnon also made an important contribution.
From this moment onwards, everything became possible , Sourouzian said.Annual excavations on the site began to bear fruit under the labors of an international team of experts and 250 Egyptian workers.
The team discovered pieces of four giant Amenhotep statues, two sphinxes, 84 statues of the war goddess Sekhmet depicted as a lioness, and a stele whose 150 fragments were spread across a site which has to be constantly drained.
It is planned that five years from now the statues of Sekhmet the lion-headed goddess will stand again.
The tenth annual dig, which ends this month, has already unearthed a 3.62-metre-tall statue of Tiya, Amenhotep s wife.
She has an extraordinary beauty , Sourouzian said.
When the two 15-metre red quartz colossi of Amenhotep become upright again in 2009 Tiya s statue will once again stand next to those of her spouse.
The two other giant statues that have been uncovered are not yet ready to reclaim their place alongside the others, however. They are made of alabaster and extremely rare because of the material s fragility.
Unlike other neighboring funerary temples such as the Ramasseum, dedicated to Ramses II, and Ramses III s temple at Medinat Habu, we will be able to admire the temple s content, not only its skeleton, said Sourouzian.
But is it right to try restoring such a site to its former splendor? For Sourouzian there is no question about it.
We didn t invent anything. We just put something that was about to disappear for ever back in its original place. A living temple lay here, not just the colossi.
