The pharaohs get a face-lift

The Times Online

I was tempted to think that nothing ever changes in Luxor. Temples and tombs survive; boats sail on the Nile; the fellahin, Egypt’s farmers, still irrigate their crops with rainwater from Ethiopia and Uganda; and the sun, the valley and nearby desert remain the defining facts of life, just as they were in the paintings in the pharaohs’ tombs. But I was wrong. Luxor is being transformed. . . .

Yet, in the couple of years since Dr Samir Farag became governor, Luxor has gone through enormous change. On the eastern side of the river, he has renovated the train station, demolished the restaurants and souvenir stalls that blocked the view of Luxor and Karnak temples, and rebuilt the souk. He is enlarging the airport and moving all “floating hotels” several miles upstream; he has opened a Nubian cultural centre, a branch of Cairo’s Mubarak Public Library . . . and all this is just the beginning. No wonder some inhabitants are quaking at the thought of what is to come.

The largest and most impressive of all Luxor’s many antiquities is Karnak temple, on the east bank. It is also the most confusing, because every pharaoh who wanted to be remembered had to make his mark here – and all of them did. The result has been to leave the place without any obvious rationale.

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