Illustrative: A tourist takes a picture of two colossal statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III in Egypt's famed temple city of Luxor, December 14, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/Radwan Abu Elmagd)
The statue is reportedly one of very few artifacts believed to date to the rule of Sahure, between 2487 and 2475 BCE.
Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities confirmed the discovery of the lower part of royal statue bearing the name of the second ruler of the Old Kingdom’s Fifth Dynasty.
Together with his team, lead excavator Dirk Huyge of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels found the statue’s limestone base inscribed with the Pharaoh’s name in the in the Al-Kab site some 580 kilometers south of Cairo.
Belgian archaeologists announced the discovery of lower part of a royal statue showing the name of King “Sahure”, second King of the 5th Dynasty in the Old Kingdom, on April 28, 2015. (Photo credit: Egyptian Antiquities Authority)
According to the report, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities believes the base, measuring 21 centimeters in height, to be the the bottom half of a larger, 70-centimeter statue depicting King Sahure seated on a throne.
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Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities called the find “of great significance and importance,” and said the team would continue to excavate the area in hopes of unearthing further artifacts related to the ancient king, the report said.
There are only two known intact statutes of King Sahure — one is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the other at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Head of a gneiss statue of Sahure in the gallery 103 of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Photo credit: Keith Schengili-Roberts / Wikipedia)
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