We feel like there must have been larger restoration projects, but that's how the Ministry of Tourisn and Antiquities are presenting the mission to fully restore the ram statues at Luxor's Temple of Amun-Ra on their Facebook page. Maybe it will become easier to see what they mean once we examine the full scope of the undertaking.

The story began when the Supreme Council of Antiquities went to the temple at Karnak to transfer four of the ram statues to Tahrir Square. There they saw that it wasn't just those four statues that needed repairs; they found 29 statues at risk of total collapse due to mistreatment during the early 1970s, when the temple underwent a touch-up for a light-and-sound show. At the time, the ram statues had been restored, but they were then placed on a surface that exposed them to underlying salty ground water, which leaked and was absorbed into the statues. This caused large splits to form within the statues; in some cases, grass and fungi managed to grow inside the cracks, exacerbating the damage.

The current project now hopes to reverse the damage and restore all 29 of the statues to their former glory in a long, careful process that involves locating all of a given statue's pieces, removing disintegrated dust from within the statues, and the use of appropriate materials to strengthen their weakened constitutions - and all this must be done 29 times in a row. Three of the statues have already been repaired as of the time of this writing. While it may not be as big and dramatic as moving an entire temple brick by brick, it's easy to see how ambitious this large-scale rescue mission is - and how much caution it must take to avoid repeating the errors of the past.