Engineers on Friday moved the giant statue of Pharaoh Ramses II from a congested square in Cairo to its new home near the more peaceful Great Pyramids.
Contractors moved the more than 3,200-year-old statue from Ramses Square in an effort to save it from exhaust fumes and other environmental hazards that were causing the 83-tonne structure to deteriorate.
Onlookers crowded along the street around the statue, which was surrounded by a convoy including 1,500 soldiers, during the final leg of its journey.
The trip took about 10 hours from Ramses Square - its home since the early 1950s when it was taken from a temple at the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis - to its new location about 1.5 kilometres from the pyramids near the site of the future Grand Museum of Egypt.
"I think that today if Ramses could talk, he would say 'Thank you for moving me,' " antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told state-run television.
2 comments:
it's a shame they can't be coated with something that would protect them.
what like 20,000,000 tons of sand and stones ... ie a pyramid ?
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