[In pictures] Egypt: the mythical alley of the sphinxes restored thousands of years later

Fireworks light up the sky during the reopening ceremony of Avenue of the Sphinxes, commonly known as El Kebbash Road, on Thursday, November 25, 2021 in Luxor, Egypt.

© AP Photo / Mohamed El-Shahed

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

Egypt inaugurated Thursday, November 25 with great pomp the mythical alley of the sphinxes joining the temples of Karnak and Luxor over nearly three kilometers.

An alley that we started to clear in 1949 before it was completely cleared in October 2021. Three thousand years ago, we celebrated the Opet festival, the largest of the Pharaonic era. 

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It is a modern celebration of the Opet festival that took place for the inauguration of the Alley of the Sphinxes.

A great production with hundreds of dancers in pharaonic clothes performing the procession between the temples of Karnak and Luxor and carrying on golden boats the statues of the gods Amon, Mut and Khonsu.

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Singers and musicians accompanied the ceremony with compositions inspired by ancient Egypt and modern folklore before a final of fireworks on the Nile.

Demolish and compensate to restore

To clear the driveway, which had been covered with alluvium over the centuries, it was necessary to dig but also to expropriate and demolish dozens of buildings and compensate the owners.

807 sphinxes with a human head and 250 with a ram's head have been discovered and restored, but excavations will continue because they are only a third of the sphinxes of Antiquity. 

Tourism professionals are rubbing their hands, in an already highly touristic place: all the hotels in Luxor were full for the inauguration. 

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• Egypt

• Culture

• Archeology