When he unrolled the plans for acting college archivist Marianne LaBatto, "it was like he was opening up the blueprints to the losttemple of Jerusalem, " Ms. LaBatto said.
Over the centuries both the Nile and the desert sands imperceptibly shifted, and this temple was lost to the world until 1813, when it was accidentally rediscovered by the Swiss explorer Jean-Louis Burckhardt.
Lining the steps up to a temple are scores of beggars: soldiers with legs lost to landmines, mothers with pot-bellied babies, a dwarf with misshapen limbs who could be ten or 30.
Art historians at the University of Chicago have digitally recreated another Buddhist cave temple complex at Xiangtangshan in northern China, where many of the site's original sculptures have been lost or removed.