Luxor Temple - Excavation

Excavation

From medieval times the Muslim population of Luxor had settled in and around the temple, at the southward end of the mount. Due to the Luxor’s past city population building on top of and around the Luxor temple, centuries of rubble had accumulated, to the point where there was an artificial hill some forty-eight or fifty feet in height. The Luxor Temple had begun to be excavated by Professor Gaston Maspero after 1884 after he had been given the order to commence operations. The excavations were carried out sporadically until 1960. Over time, accumulated rubbish of the ages had buried three fourths of the actual temple which contained the courts and colonnades which formed the actual nucleus of the Arab half of the Modern village. Maspero had actually taken interest earlier, and he had actually taken over the post of Mariette Pasha to complete the job in 1881. Not only was there rubbish, but there was also barracks, stores, houses, huts, pigeon towers, which needed to be removed in order to excavate the site. Maspero received from the Egyptian minister of public works the authorization needed to obtain funds in order to negotiate compensation for the pieces of land covered by the houses and dependencies.