CAIRO - Archaeologists found what may be a trove of 3,400 year old statues on the west bank of the ancient temple city Luxor, said the head of Egypt's antiquities department on Thursday. Teams unearthed two rose granite statue fragments from an area west of the burial temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III earlier this week, said Zahi Hawass. One fragment, the first of its kind, he said, depicts the baboon head of the god Hapi with a human body. The other is a fragment of a statue of the body of Amenhotep III, whose funerary complex is one of the largest archaeological findings in Egypt. The area to the west of the temple was previously thought to have been used for only housing and agriculture. Archaeologists first found artifacts there while building a water drainage system around the temple and the area is now being excavated.
