Excavations on the Avenue of Sphinxes, a key element of the large project to convert Luxor into an open museum, intended to unearth the route that linked the Luxor and Karnak Temple in Pharaonic times, have come to a halt. While visiting the town in May to give impetus to the project, incumbent Prime Minister Essam Sharaf promised that the excavations would be resumed, so that the reclaimed Avenue of the Sphinxes would be inaugurated in October at the start of tourism’s high season. Despite his promise, the situation is at a standstill.

During routine excavation work the French-Egyptian archaeological team working at the Karnak Temple in Luxor uncovered two major monuments. The first is the wall that once enclosed the New Kingdom temple of the god Ptah and the second is a gate dated back to the reign of 25th dynasty King Shabaka (712-698 BC).

Twelve sphinx statues have been found near the Karnak Temple in Luxor. The statues were found by a mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which was excavating in the area of the Sphinx Alley which leads to the temple. The statues date back to the reign of King Nectanebo I (380-363 BC), the last pharaoh of the 30th Dynasty.

Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Dr. Zahi Hawass returned a piece of red granite belonging to an ancient Egyptian temple to its rightful place - the base of Amenemhat I's naos. The naos piece was returned to Egypt last October by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after it was purchased by the Museum from an antiquities collector in New York.

Excavations on part of an ancient 2.7km avenue of sphinxes that once linked temples in Luxor and Karnak should be completed in March, Egypt's antiquities chief said. Archaeologists have so far uncovered 65 of the 1 350 sphinxes that lined a path between temples during the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep III.

The aims of this project are to create a scientific database, including all the objects which come from the Karnak Cachette; to set up photographic documentation concerning the Karnak Cachette, by numbering archives in the current collections and taking additional photographs; to describe each object and give the museographical, epigraphical, prosopographical data and complete bibliography in relation to it and to make the database available on the web.

The work undertaken by the Franco- Egyptian Research Centre of Karnak Temples (CFEETK) in 2008 was slightly different from in previous years. Last year's study focussed on restoration more than excavation. The site that took up much of the centre's attention was the Osirian cults and featured the chapel of Osiris Wennefer Neb-Djefau, the path of Ptah and the neighbouring chapels of Osiris Neb-Neheh and Nebankh-Pa-Usheb-Iad, as well as the temples of Osiris from Coptos, Opet and Khonsu.

During routine excavation work carried out by an Egyptian archaeological mission in the front courtyard at Karnak, part of the Karnak Temples site management project for the area enclosed between the temples and the Nile, a 250-metre-long embankment used to protect Karnak from the Nile flood was discovered, along with a quay, baths and a settlement.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a pier used by ancient Egyptians to access the Karnak temple complex during the dry season in Luxor, the Egyptian government said on Monday. The pier led to a platform 2.5 metres by 5 metres, in contrast with a much larger dock used during the flooding season to handle cargo, sacrificial animals and stone blocks.

The Digital Karnak Project aims to make the site of Karnak more accessible to students and instructors in the English-speaking world. The website features a geographically-referenced "time-map" highlighting the areas of the temple under construction during the reign of each Egyptian king, thematic videos of a 3D Virtual Reality model of the temple along with corresponding instructional texts, individual descriptions of each temple building recreated on the Virtual Reality model and a fully interactive Google Earth version of the model.