RECENT excavations conducted in the 2.7km-long Avenue of Sphinxes, along which the cult statue of the god Amun was annually carried from the Temple of Amun at Karnak to the Temple of Luxor, yielded a wonderful surprise for the team of 30 excavators and 30 restorers on the site. The find was nothing but a few stones; however, the inscriptions they bear mean a great deal. One inscription was on the royal cartouche of Queen Cleopatra VII (51-30 BC). This is actually the first time ever that her name has appeared in the Upper Egyptian city of Luxor, the modern name for Thebes. The Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra ruled Egypt from Alexandria, where several of her statues and items from her royal palace were found lying on the bed of the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago. The cartouche also described a winter trip she took with her husband Caesar to the temples of Karnak and Luxor, as Mansour Berek, Director of the Upper Egypt Antiquities Department, explains. The royal couple used to proceed along the Avenue of Sphinxes, used as a setting for the festival of Opet. “The visit to this religious site prompted her to order the restoration of the avenue, leaving behind an inscribed cartouche about her trip,” Berek told the Arabic-language Al-Mussawar magazine. Cleopatra was perhaps not the most beautiful or intelligent Egyptian queen, but she was certainly politically astute. Shakespeare's masterpiece Antony and Cleopatra has undoubtedly bestowed immortality on this love story, in which political intrigue and passion bestow a peculiar flavour to the history of that Ptolemaic era. The whereabouts of their tombs is still a mystery to archaeologists. However, excavators believe that the tombs will soon be unearthed in the newly excavated site of the Temple of Taposiris Magna, 50km west of Alexandria. A Dominican team have been digging there for several seasons and a series of about 40 to 45 tombs cut into the bedrock, 35 metres deep, were pinpointed last year. There is convincing evidence of a royal tomb, thought to be that of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. For instance, 22 bronze coins bearing the portrait of Cleopatra have been dug up, in addition to a headless royal statue and a mask, most probably of the Roman leader Mark Antony. More importantly, an alabaster statue of the queen found there refutes recent allegations that she was ugly. Anyway, let's wait to see what further excavations yield. Meanwhile, the excavation and restoration underway in the Avenue of Sphinxes is being implemented in three stages. The buildings that had been constructed over parts of the avenue have already been demolished and the residents given LE30 million in compensation. Moreover, another LE30 million has been allocated to restore the avenue to its original splendour. This involves constructing a mudbrick wall along the entire length of the avenue, to protect it from encroachments, in addition to excavation work. So far 80 per cent of the avenue has been excavated, with thousands of scattered parts of the bodies and heads of sphinxes uncovered. So far, 650 of the original 1,350 statues have been recovered. Wine presses, potteries and buildings dating back to the Roman era have all been unearthed. The remains of one of Queen Hatshepsut's chapels, whose columns were later used as the bases for the sphinxes, are also among the finds, according to archaeological reports.
