Egypt’s tourism industry has been flagging in recent years, following the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s reign in 2011. The struggling country has since tourism drop, with an estimated 14.7 million people visiting in 2010, and only 9.8 million coming in 2011. Terror threats made the recent holiday season, which is usually popular with British travelers, underperform as well. But a recent archeological discovery might help to bring Egypt tourism back.
An Egyptian-German expedition has discovered a 26-foot-tall statue buried in the Matariya area of Cairo where the ancient city of Heliopolis once stood. They think the statue is of Ramses II, better known as Ramses the Great and also called Ozymandias.
Ramses II was one of the most famous and important pharaohs to have ruled in Egypt, and if that statue is of him, it’s a huge find, both literally and figuratively. He is known to have expanded the Egyptian empire to the point where it stretched from Syria in the east to northern Sudan in the south. He also founded the sun temple in Heliopolis, which was one of the largest temples in Egypt—eclipsing even the Karnak temple at Luxor—until it was destroyed during Greco-Roman times.
“We found the bust of the statue and the lower part of the head and now we removed the head and we found the crown and the right ear and a fragment of the right eye,” Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani told The Guardian.
The Grand Egyptian Museum will be opening in Giza in 2018. The archeological team will be extracting the remaining pieces of the Ramses II statue and restoring it, in hopes that it will be displayed in front of the museum for its grand opening.
Egypt’s history has fascinated people for centuries, and it’s been a big part of the draw for travelers, though until relatively recently much of that history was carted off to England and other countries as archeologists basically took whatever they wanted. Archeology has come a long way since the first half of the 20th Century though, and now that Egypt can display its own history and pull in visitors.
The team still needs to find out for sure whether the statue is of Ramses II or another famous Egyptian pharaoh. Even if the statue is of some other ancient Egyptian VIP, it’s still an important find, and will still make a suitably dramatic display wherever it ends up.
Photo: The Hall of Caryatids in the Temple of Karnak at Luxor, Egypt. Credit: Shutterstock.