Tourism Police in Luxor have managed to reopen the Valley of the Queens and Deir al-Madina for tourists after the governor responded to demands of local residents.
Brigadier Hosni Hussein, monuments and tourism detective for the southern portion of Upper Egypt, told state-run newspaper Al-Ahram that he and the governorate’s secretary general met with the residents to consider their demands.
Dozens of villagers from Qarnat Marai in Luxor had closed on Sunday the Valley of the Queens and Deir al-Madina, both of which are the sites of pharaonic tombs, to protest local officials' failure to provide them with land promised in compensation for being evacuated from their homes for archaeological excavations.
The protesters accused local officials of nepotism, saying they only gave out land to acquaintances and others who had no property claims.
Protesters filed a police complaint against local officials accusing them of deliberately delaying their compensations.
Edited translation from DPA
