Lecture notes: Luxor Temple Mosque and Sphinx Avenue

Luxor News Blog (Jane Akshar)

Mummification Museum Lecture - Luxor Temple Mosque and Sphinx Avenue – Mansour Boraik

I love Mansour’s lectures; he is amusing, knowledgeable, with excellent English and crafted slideshows. He gave us a through update about the work in Luxor. The President comes on the 2nd March and Sphinx Avenue has to be open then. However excavation and restoration takes a long time so they are having to balance things. The first part of the excavation is being down by mechanical diggers under control of the army who have subcontracted the work. But he is very conscious that “if we miss anything history will not forgive us”.

Firstly he talked about the Abu Hajaj mosque at Luxor temple, it had been his dream to reveal the inscriptions and in May 2007 he visited and took many photos. However the guardians of the mosque would not allow him to change anything. Then in July 2007 there was a massive fire which destroyed the mosque and he was able to take advantage of this and offer to do a complete restoration in return for revealing the inscriptions. The only thing registered as an historical object was the military observation/beacon tower from the Fatimid period.