/ 13 July 1999

TEMPLE TO MOVE

THE Egyptian government has given the green light to move a 2500-year-old temple to another site in the Western desert to save it from corrosive underground water. Workers will next week start transferring the base of temple Amun, its columns, and walls 300m north of its location at Hibis in the Kharga oasis, antiquities chief Gaballah Ali Gaballah said on Monday night. The 30-day project is less complex than the $40-million Unesco project in 1964 to dismantle and move the temple at Abu Simbel away from the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the Aswan Dam was built.