What you need to know about royal statues return to Egypt for display at GEM

CAIRO – 8 August 2020: Secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri announced on Thursday that two massive royal statues arrived  to Egypt.

The one of a kind statues were among the artifacts displayed in the exhibition "The Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt" in the United States of America. 

The two statues will  be among the artifacts exhibited in the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest museum in the world to be dedicated to the one and only Egyptian civilization.

Moemen Othman, head of the Museums Sector, said that the statues is of a Ptolemaic king and queen  made of pink granite and the length of each one reaches about 5 meters.

The first statue depicts the king standing and wearing the double crown with his left foot forward, his hands clenched beside him.

As for the second statue, it depicts the queen standing in a transparent robe, wearing the crown of Hathor, with her left foot forward.

 Waziri added that these two statues were returned after approval by the Council of Ministers and will be transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Waziri further pointed out that these two statues were within the exhibition "Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt", which started its foreign tour in 2015, where it visited the French capital, Paris, the British capital London, the city of Zurich in Switzerland and four cities in the United States of America. It is now on display at the Virginia Museum of Art.

The exhibition includes 293 artifacts that were recovered from the sunken city of Heracleion

 in Abu Qir.

Moemen Othman, head of the Museums Sector, said that the statues is of a Ptolemaic king and queen  made of pink granite and the length of each one reaches about 5 meters.

The first statue depicts the king standing and wearing the double crown with his left foot forward, his hands clenched beside him.

As for the second statue, it depicts the queen standing in a transparent robe, wearing the crown of Hathor, with her left foot forward.

“Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt” exhibition was inaugurated on July 3. The exhibition is now seeing a fourth touring round in the United States.  

The exhibition of sunken Egyptian antiquities which is located at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is dating back to different historical periods.

 Waziri previously said that the exhibition displays 293 artifacts that were recovered from the cities Heracleion and Canopus in the eastern port of Alexandria and the port of Abu Qir.

“Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt” exhibition houses as well two huge statues of Isis and Serapis as well as statues of a Sphinx and some ornaments and household items.

The artefacts that are displayed in the exhibition are not dating back to the Pharaonic periods only, but some belong to the Ptolemaic and Roman times as well.

Waziri  pointed out that the exhibition’s working hours is from 9 am to 10 pm and scheduled to continue until January 2021. Only 35 visitors are received every 15 minites, this comes because of the precautionary measures taken by the museum administration to organize the visit to the exhibition in accordance with international health safety standards.

These Egyptian sunken artifacts are most probably found in Alexandria at certain archaeological sites, such as Abu Qir Port, Qaitbay Castle, and the Maamora Gulf, but there are also a considerable number of sunken treasures hidden beneath the surface of the Nile in Aswan and near Khufu Port in Giza.

In 2015 “Sunken Cities: The Enchanting World of Egypt” exhibition was first opened at the Arab World Institute of France under the title “Osiris … the secrets of sunken Egypt”, and then transferred to the British Museum in England. The first tour ended with an exhibition in Switzerland.