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.

Hundreds of residents of the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor clashed with riot police Friday during a protest against government attempts to move them to make room for an open-air museum free of modern buildings. The demonstration turned violent when police prevented the protesters from entering Karnak Temple, one of the most famous sites from the Pharaonic era, according to witnesses. Residents hurled stones at police, who responded by firing tear gas and arresting 13 people.

A series of surprising discoveries has been made at the foot of Egypt's famous Temple of Amun at Karnak, archaeologists say. The new finds include ancient ceremonial baths, a pharaoh's private entry ramp, and the remains of a massive wall built some 3,000 years ago to reinforce what was then the bank of the Nile River.

Remains of an ancient dam dating back some 4,000 years have been discovered in Upper Egypt, local English daily The Egyptian Gazette reported Sunday. Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said Saturday that the ancient dam was found a few meters away from the Karnak Temple in Luxor, some 500 km south of Cairo.