BURIED FOR MORE THAN 3,300 YEARS, REMNANTS OF ...

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JACK FIELDS/CORBIS
Valley of the Kings Royal Mummy Cache Valley of the Queens Temple of Hatshepsut at deir el-Bahri Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III dra Abu el-naga Sheikh Abd el-Qurna 0 1 miles new town of Qurna Hypostyle Court Peristyle Court Second Court nile River modern Luxor Luxor Temple First Court Colossi of Memnon Karnak Third Court Pylon III Pylon II Pylon I transported to Alexandria for shipment to St. Petersburg to be placed at the embankments of the neva River where they remain today, having been recently restored. numerous other statues from the site continued to enrich collections of egyptian antiquities worldwide. despite these predations, however, recent exploration of the area by members of our international team of archaeologists and conservators has revealed that much of the temple has, in fact, survived at the site, albeit in fragments and in dire need of documentation and conservation. Although Kom el-Hettan had been the subject of several archaeological campaigns, its remains had never been systematically excavated and mapped, save for a few isolated areas. In 1930, the well-known German egyptologist and architect Ludwig Borchardt sounded and mapped portions of the Great Peristyle Court and the Hypostyle Hall, as well as the colossi lying at the northern gate of the precinct. Unfortunately, his notes remain unpublished. In the 1950s, the egyptian Antiquities department carried out several projects, including the restoration of a large stela at the entrance to the Great Peristyle Court. It was during work in this area that a monumental head of a royal statue in red granite was discovered, which was later put on display in the Luxor Museum of Art. In 1964 and 1970 members of the Swiss Institute for Architecture and Archaeological Research in cooperation with the egyptian Antiquities department opened up a number of exploratory trenches that were documented and later published. From these limited excavations, a preliminary map of the site was developed. However, it was far from complete. More-over, these early campaigns laid bare abun- dant architectural remains—stelae, columns, building blocks, and fragmented colossal statues—with no provision for their conservation. Complicating matters has been a dramatic change in the Luxor landscape since the construction of the Aswan dam in the 1960s. While the remains of the temple have not been directly
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Page 7 and 8: a sTaTue of Queen Tiye, The wife of

BURIED FOR MORE THAN 3,300 YEARS, REMNANTS OF ...

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