The eight-metre statue of the most important Pharaoh, Ramses II, is more than 3,000 years old.
Its discovery was hailed by the Antiquities Ministry as one of the most important ever having been made in the ancient city of Heliopolis.
The city was thought to be the home of the sun god and was out-of-bounds for Pharaohs but build during Ramses’ reign.
Egyptologist Khaled Nabil Osman said the statue was an ‘impressive find’ and the area is likely full of other buried antiquities.
The giant head is part of the statue that is an ‘impressive’ find (Picture: AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKIKHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
‘It was the main cultural place of ancient Egypt, even the bible mentions it,’ he said.
‘The sad news is that the whole area needs to be cleaned up, the sewers and market should be moved.’
Other locations like Luxur and Abu Simbel have giant statues of the leader.
‘Last Tuesday they called me to announce the big discovery of a colossus of a king, most probably Ramses II, made out of quartzite,’ Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani said.
The most powerful and celebrated ruler of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh also known as Ramses the Great was the third of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE.
The statue will be put together and moved into Cairo (Picture: AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKIKHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
He led several military expeditions and expanded the Egyptian Empire to stretch from Syria in the east to Nubia in the south. His successors called him the ‘Great Ancestor’.
‘We found the bust of the statue and the lower part of the head and now we removed the head and we found the crown and the right ear and a fragment of the right eye,’ Anani said.
The Egyptian and German teams also found an 80-cm long upper part of a life-sized limestone statue of Pharaoh Seti II, Ramses II’s grandson.
Khaled el-Anani poses for picture with workers (Picture: AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKIKHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
Plans to piece all the remains of the statues together will culminate in them being moved to the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum, set to open in 2018.
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