Large statue of Ramses II is unearthed in Egypt – 03/04/2024 – Science

A joint Egyptian-American archaeological mission discovered the upper part of a huge statue of King Ramses II during excavations south of the Egyptian city of Minya, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities ministry said on Monday.

The limestone block is about 3.8 meters tall 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 shows hieroglyphic writing that glorifies the king, one of the most powerful pharaohs in ancient Egypt, he said.

Also known as Ramses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of Egypt’s nineteenth dynasty and ruled from 1279 to 1213 B.C.

The size of the statue, when combined with its lower part, which was unearthed decades ago, would reach around 7 meters.

The city of El Ashmunein, on the west bank of the River Nile, was known in ancient Egypt as Khemnu and in the Greco-Roman era was the regional capital of Hermopolis Magna.

Studies have confirmed that the upper part of the statue matches the lower section discovered by German archaeologist Gunther Roeder in 1930, said Mustafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The mission began cleaning and preparing the block before modeling what the statue would look like when the two sections are combined, Waziri said.