| : Fantastic clarity! I feel as if I'm there! Are a lot of those sculptures and buildings reworked? Looks like they were rebuilt.
Some of those places have been excavated only recently, like the Luxor temple. When I was there, they where excavating a 3.6 km long avenue of sphinxes connecting the Karnak temple and the Luxor temple.
Some temples have been moved to save them from the waters of Lake Nasser which they created by bulding the big Assuan dam (which is 100 m high, by the way). Abu Simbel has been carved up and relocated to the shore of the lake, the Philae temple has been moved to a new island.
Most of the stuff is original, but there are reproductions like the barque in the inner sanctum of the Horus temple. All the temple facades had been colorful but of the colors almost nothing is left. There are some colors left at the Hatshepsout temple and also in the graves in the valley of the kings. But you aren't allowed to take pictures there, probably because they fear that the flashes will harm the colors (or because they want to sell books and postcards ;-)).
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