The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities is calling the discovery of a massive 3,000-year-old statue believed to represent Ramses II “one of [its] most important archaeological discoveries.”
In front of state officials and media teams on Thursday, archaeologists from Egypt and Germany started lifting the quartzite monument, which is said to be thirty feet tall, from the ground in Matariya, greater Cairo.
Dietrich Raue of the University of Leipzig, who leads the German team of archaeologists working on the excavation, says the discovery marks the conclusion of an excavation that started in 2012.
He clarifies, “It was in an area that was almost completely investigated.” In the deteriorated courtyard, the team had discovered basalt bases but nothing more substantial. “That was a huge surprise because we assumed [the pit] would be empty and featureless.”
The statue is most likely that of Pharaoh Ramses II, also known as Ozymandias, according to Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anani, who attended the ceremony.
Mahmoud Afifi, the ministry’s head of Ancient Egyptian antiquities, stated that although the statue has no inscriptions identifying it as Ramses II, its finding next to the gate of a temple devoted to him makes him the most likely subject. However, Raue says that even though Ramses II undoubtedly erected the statue there, the jury is still
A worker stands with part of the quartzite head, removed Thursday. KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Ramses II, a colossus known as the “Great Ancestor” to his descendants, ruled for 66 years from 1279 to 1213 BC as part of Ancient Egypt’s 19th dynasty. He conquered swathes of Nubia in modern-day Sudan and Syria.
His exploits have echoed down the ages, inspiring British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley to pen sonnet “Ozymandias” three millennia later in 1818:
“Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away,” Shelley wrote, imagining a Ramses II statue in ruins. But rather than endless desert and the Valley of the Kings, this Ozymandias was retrieved from a pit swamped with groundwater.
The ministry has come under fire on social media and from some news outlets for using a forklift truck to extract part of the statue from the site.
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Afifi responded by saying the sheer weight of the head was a factor, with Raue confirming the statue had not been damaged in the process.
Archaeologists are still working out how to remove the even larger torso portion of the statue, the ministry adds.
The dig has also uncovered a 31-inch section of a life-sized limestone statue of Ramses II’s grandson Seti II. The dig is continuing, and experts hope to uncover more of the Ozymandias statue for restoration.
“I’m rather sure that [the hips and legs] will be there,” Raue says, “but the problem is we’re in the middle of the city, and the bottom part may be very close to the houses. It would be dangerous to excavate closer to the houses, so probably we will not get the bottom part.”
Raue told CNN he doubts a full reconstruction of the face will be possible, though he said fragments of the eyes, crown and lips have been retrieved.
The head and torso will be moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, which is due to open in 2018.