On Sunday evening, the Giza Plateau was buzzing with visitors, as Egyptian and foreign journalists, TV anchors, photographers and top government officials flocked to the area to witness the official inauguration of the Sphinx courtyard, off the tourist path for two decades. King Menkawre's Pyramid, the smallest of the three Giza Pyramids, and Amenhotep II's Temple were also opened to visitors. Carved from a single ridge of stone, the limestone half-man half-lion Sphinx proudly sits in a quarry below the level of the plateau greeting visitors. “The Sphinx is now safe and sound after being hidden under scaffolding for almost three years,” Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told reporters during a tour of the plateau before the arrival of Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb to announce the official inauguration of the courtyard. He added that the restoration aimed at consolidating the northern side of the statue which includes a large part of the Sphinx's left shoulder and neck. The restoration work had included replacing some blocks on the left side of the statue where there were cracks and refurbishing the chest and neck of the monument with a new coating to prevent further erosion. “Restoration work took place on the new blocks inserted to consolidate those added during the last century's restoration,” he said. To encourage tourism, Eldamaty said that the Sphinx courtyard would be open for the first time in years and a separate ticket to the one for the Plateau would be required by those wishing to be face-to-face with the great Sphinx. Between the front paws of the Sphinx is the granite “dream stelae” inscribed with a story relating a dream of the 18th Dynasty King Thutmose IV. The story says that Thutmose IV fell asleep under the Sphinx, which was buried in the sand to its neck, and had a dream that the Sphinx spoke to him and promised that if he would free it from the sand Thutmose would become king of Egypt. Thutmose started the first excavation work to uncover the Sphinx in 1400 BCE, and with the help of a large team of workers the king succeeded in digging out the front paws, between which he placed a granite slab, now called the dream stelae. Later, King Ramses II undertook a second excavation. In 1817, Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Caviglia carried out excavation work in the area and uncovered the Sphinx's chest. In 1925, further digging work was carried out by French Egyptologist Emile Baraize, and in 1936 the entire Sphinx was finally excavated. In 1931 engineers employed by the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx when part of its headdress fell off due to erosion. The Sphinx has since been restored several times, most recently for a ten-year span starting in the 1990s. The pyramid of the 4th dynasty king Menkawre was also inaugurated after a new lighting system was installed and the wooden stairs inside it repaired. Eldamaty said that budgetary problems had been behind the delay in the completion of the restoration, which had taken three years and not the one originally planned. According to the ministry's rotation plan, one pyramid of the three Pyramids of Giza will be closed every year for restoration. The temple the 18th dynasty king Amenhotep II built to the Sphinx was also among the monuments opened to visitors at the Plateau. In this temple, Amenhotep II paid homage to both Khufu and Khafre, builders of the two largest pyramids at Giza. During the opening ceremony, Mehleb said it was important to maintain the Plateau. He said that during previous visits maintenance had been required and there had been evidence of encroachment. Mehleb ordered the ministries of antiquities and tourism to cooperate with the tourism and antiquities police in order to remove any future encroachments and prohibit the entrance of horses and camels to the area. Eldamaty also announced that the Fayoum entrance would be opened soon within the framework of ministry plans to develop the Giza Plateau.
