Cairo (Egypt) | Portal
A joint EgyptianAmerican archaeological mission has discovered the upper part of a giant statue of King Ramses II during excavations south of the Egyptian city of Minya, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said on Monday.
The limestone block is about 3.8 meters high and depicts a seated Ramses wearing a double crown and a headdress with a royal snake on top, Bassem Jihad, head of the mission's Egyptian team, said in a statement.
The top of the statue's back column features hieroglyphic writings glorifying the king, one of the most powerful pharaohs in ancient Egypt, he said.
Also known as Ramesses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of Egypt's Nineteenth Dynasty, reigning from 1279 to 1213 BC. BC
The size of the statue, including its lower part excavated decades ago, would be about 7 meters.
The city of El Ashmunein on the western bank of the Nile was known as Khemnu in ancient Egypt and was the regional capital of Hermopolis Magna in the GrecoRoman period.
Studies have confirmed that the upper part of the statue matches the lower part discovered by German archaeologist Gunther Roeder in 1930, said Mustafa Waziri, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The mission began by cleaning and preparing the block before modeling what the statue would look like if the two sections were combined, Waziri said.