A landowner in Behbeit El-Hagar, an Egyptian village in the Nile Delta about seventy-six miles north of Cairo, unearthed a head from a monumental statue believed to represent Ramses II. The discovery led archaeologists to find additional pieces belonging to two separate statues of the Egyptian king.
According to Hisham El-Lithi, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the first head is five feet three inches tall and wears a pschent—a double crown symbolizing the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt worn by ancient Egyptian rulers. ArtNews reports that the size of the head lead experts to believe that the full statue would have been twenty-eight-feet tall.
The excavation uncovered part of the statue’s back pillar bearing the king’s Horus name, “Hor-ka-nakht-mery-maat.” Other fragments littered the nearby area: a second head, adorned with the striped cloth generally associated with ancient Egyptian rulers; an eight-foot segment of a figure’s body; and a pink granite block about four feet long. The block is inscribed with two other titles associated with Ramses II: “Nesu-Bity” (King of Upper and Lower Egypt) and “Sa-Ra” (Son of Ra). Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, was the third pharaoh of Egypt’s nineteenth Dynasty, reigning from approximately 1279 to 1213 BCE.
Behbeit El-Hagar is a significant archaeological site, best known for the remains of a monumental temple dedicated to the Egyptian deity Isis. The temple at Behbeit El-Hagar, parts of which remain, was notable for its extensive use of granite in the construction of monumental architectural elements.