Until three months ago, that is, when authorities nabbed a grave robber who had broken through the wall of a crypt in Akhmim’s cemetery. They recovered the head of a large Ramses statue and notified Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s powerful antiquities department. Hawass’s exploratory excavation established that this was, indeed, the site of the famous temple. Next year he plans to begin exhuming and moving thousands of graves to get at the temple, whose size can only be guessed at from the distance between where Meritamon’s statue was found and the Ramses head: 492 feet. As Hawass recounts in his new book, “Secrets From the Sand,” even some educated modern Egyptians believe in the power of the god Min. One Cairo doctor he mentions credits a Min statue in the Temple of Thoth with helping his wife conceive a son. What will happen if they unearth an entire temple dedicated to Min, the gods only know.
