Travel Themes: Statues

By CadyLuck Leedy on March 28, 2014

In 1820 Italian archaeologist, Giovanni Caviglia, discovered the statue of Ramses II, (31 feet in length) near the southern gate of the temple of Ptah, in the ancient ruins near Memphis, Egypt.  Because the bottom of the statue has been broken off, the limestone monument is currently displayed lying on his back.

The Colossal, as it is called, was reconstructed and erected in Ramses’s Square in Cairo in 1955. In August 2006, contractors moved his 3,200-year-old statue from Ramses’s Square, to save it from exhaust fumes that were causing the 83-ton statue to deteriorate.

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