VIDEOYesterday, the historic avenue between the ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak, the Avenue of the Sphinxes, was spectacularly reopened. Egypt hopes to put itself back on the map as a tourist attraction.
Wouter Peer
The restoration of the 2,700m road was celebrated with a procession based on the historic Opet festival, in which the ancient Egyptians took a traditional boat carrying statues of the gods Amun, Mut and Khonsu across the road from the Temple of Karnak to the Temple of Thebes, present-day Luxor. With this, the ancient civilization honored the annual flooding of the Nile that made the area in the area fertile for agriculture.
President of Egypt Abdel Fattah-al-Sisi joined the procession along with about four hundred dancers dressed in Pharaoh-like outfits. With a light show and fireworks, the old procession was modernized into a spectacular show of old and new elements.
The 3400-year-old Avenue of the Sphinxes, also known as the Ramsweg, was discovered by archaeologists in 1949, and has since been restored several times. What makes the road so special is that it is a so-called dromos is: on both sides of the road there are hundreds of sphinxes with human heads, but also with ram heads. Many statues have not survived the ravages of time, but the sphinxes standing there offer an impressive glimpse into ancient Egyptian culture.
This grand reopening follows in a line of government projects that celebrate Egypt’s rich history. Last April, for example, 22 mummies were transferred from the ancient Egyptian Museum in Cairo in a bombastic manner to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. Egypt hopes to attract more tourists with these kinds of projects. Due to the many government scandals in recent years and the corona pandemic, tourism in the country has fallen sharply, while a large part of the Egyptian economy is dependent on the sector.
Watch the parade in Cairo in which 22 mummies were transferred from an old to a new museum:
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