The missing part of the huge statue of Ramses II, discovered in 1930, has finally been found

The missing puzzle piece has finally been found! Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Tuesday, March 5, that it had discovered a block of limestone measuring approximately 3.8 meters depicting a seated Ramses II wearing a double crown and a headdress topped by a king cobra. Mustafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that “the fragment of the found statue corresponds to the upper part of the statue discovered by German archaeologist Günther Roeder in 1930.”

The mission then began cleaning and preparing the block, and then modeled what the statue would look like when the two sections were combined, reaching a height of about 7 meters. “His statues were called colossal and could reach a height of up to 20 m. Some of them were personified, given names and became real objects of worship for the Egyptians,” explains Frédéric Peyrault, an Egyptologist at the Sorbonne University.

Ramses II, one of the most powerful pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, reigned for more than sixty-six years (from 1279 to 1213 BC), an exceptional period for that time. “He was an adult (about 20 years) when he ascended the throne and died at about 90 years old, he must have appeared as a god or an immortal king,” recalls the Egyptologist.

Also known as Ramesses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty of Egypt. “He will reign during the most prosperous period of Ancient Egypt, he will ensure the security of the borders of the empire during the first twenty years of his reign, and during the remaining 47 he will establish real peace and economic prosperity throughout the region,” the Egyptologist specifies.

“A reign without equal, which has been compared to the reign of Louis XIV”

Dubbed the Builder Pharaoh, he built many grand monuments during his reign: “we find traces of him everywhere, from the temples of Luxor to Karnak to the temple of Abu Simbel, which he built in Nubia, in modern Sudan. They testify to an unsurpassed reign, which is compared with the reign of Louis XIV in France, a brilliant reign in the construction and influence of the country, this is a model, a standard,” admits Frederic Peyraudeau.

Numerous statues and colossi were also sculpted in his image, and his name was engraved on almost all temples. “All this explains, in particular, the extraordinary number of objects of art and architectural elements bearing his name that we find,” the Egyptologist reports.