Khaled al-Anany, Egypt’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, has inaugurated a project to restore 29 sphinxes at Luxor’s Karnak Temple.
The project is expected to restore and protect the statues, located in the temple’s famous “Avenue of Sphinxes”, destruction.
According to the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, the statues will be removed from “Avenue of Sphinxes” and a trench filled with sand and gravel dug around the area to prevent groundwater from reaching the statues again.
He added that an expert team of Egyptian archaeologists will restore the statues to their previous glory after they are returned to the site.
According to Waziri, the sphinxes were in poor condition due to improper restoration work undertaken in the 1970s, which caused groundwater to leak into the lower part of the statues.