Recent excavations in Egypt produced this 12.5-foot-tall piece of a statue of the pharaoh Ramses II.
The limestone figure was found at El Ashmunein archaeological site as part of a joint Egyptian-American mission led by Ivonna Trnka and Bassem Gehad from the University of Colorado and the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities made the announcement on March 4.
In addition to donning a double crown and a headpiece crowned with a royal cobra, the statue shows King Ramses II seated. Gehad released a statement claiming that Egyptian letters depicting titles extolling the monarch may also be seen in the upper portion of the statue’s rear column. The statue stands at about twenty-three feet tall.
The third pharaoh of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, Ramses II, sometimes referred to as Ramses the Great, ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE.
Mustafa Waziri, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that research has revealed that the limestone figure matches a lower section found by German archaeologist Gunther Roeder in 1930. Work on cleaning and getting ready to see what would happen if the two sculptures got together has already started.
El Ashmunein is situated on the west bank of the Nile River, south of the Egyptian city of Minya. It was once known as Khemnu in ancient Egypt and served as the regional capital of Hermopolis Magna in the Greco-Roman era, according to Reuters.
