He was also known as Ramses the Great, the third pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty. He ruled Ancient Egypt from 1279 to 1213 BC: Ramses II. A research team of Egyptian and American archaeologists has now excavated the upper part of a huge statue of the ruler.
The limestone block is around 3.8 meters high.
It shows a seated Ramses wearing a double crown and a headdress with a king cobra, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Monday.
The upper part of the statue that has now been found probably matches a lower part that was discovered in 1930 by the German archaeologist Günther Roeder.
Together with this piece, the statue would be around seven meters high.
The experts excavated the statue south of the Egyptian city of al-Minya.
The site of El-Ashmunein on the western bank of the Nile was known as Khemnu in ancient Egypt and was the regional capital of Hermopolis Magna in the Greco-Roman period.
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The upper part of the statue's back column reportedly shows hieroglyphic writing glorifying the king.
Ramses II is considered the most influential and popular ruler in Ancient Egypt.
Under him, Egypt experienced a great economic and cultural boom.
In 2017, parts of a meter-high statue were found in a mud pit in Cairo, where they were discovered during construction work.
After archaeologists initially assumed that it was Ramses II, the statue later turned out to be an image of Pharaoh Psammetich I.
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