Wednesday 5th December. This month we have our old friend John Johnson from the Horus Egyptology Society who will be telling us about the latest developments on the West Bank at Luxor and particularly the excavations at the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III. The only evidence for this temple are the two huge statues entitled Colossi of Memnon. It turns out however that this temple  was enormous, even bigger than Karnak itself.  It disappeared quite early on, probably because it was mainly made of mud brick and the constant flooding from the Nile caused it to deteriorate quickly – the rest was robbed by later pharaohs to built their temples and his statues reused changing his name with theirs (even the massive granite statue of Rameses the great in the Ramesseum was probably originally Amenhotep’s). Excavations by German archaeologists over that past 40 years have uncovered more and more remains from this site and are gradually piecing together evidence to show the this pharaoh was probably the greatest builder the New Kingdom and maybe of all time in ancient Egypt. Sounds like a great talk.