The
object is carved of limestone and decorated with a cross and Coptic texts.
Written By/ Nevine El-Aref.
Egyptian
archaeologists in Luxor have stumbled upon a decorative Coptic tombstone buried
on the eastern side of the Sphinxes Avenue, under Al-Mathan Bridge. The
tombstone is carved of limestone and decorated with a cross and Coptic texts,
Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told
Ahram Online.
The
exact date of the object has not yet been ascertained, nor the identity of the
deceased. However, Mostafa Al-Saghir, director of the Sphinxes Avenue, said
experts are now studying the tombstone find out.
The
excavations in the Sphinxes Avenue are part of a Ministry of Antiquities
programme to restore the area and transform it into an open-air museum. The
avenue was the location for the procession of the Festival of Opet, which
included priests, royalty and the pious, who walked from Karnak Temple to Luxor
Temple. Some
1,350 sphinxes, with human heads and lion bodies, lined the 2,700-metre- long
avenue, and many of them have been now been restored.
The
avenue was built during the reign of Pharaoh Nectanebo I to replace an earlier
one built in the 18th Dynasty, as recorded by Queen Hatshepsut (1502-1482 BC)
on the walls of her red chapel in Karnak Temple. Hatshepsut
built six chapels dedicated to the god Amun-Re on the route of the avenue during
her reign, demonstrating its longevity as a place of religious significance.
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