4000 year statue discovered at Giza

Reuters

With a photograph of the statue in situ.

Maintenance workers at Egypt's Giza Pyramids have found an ancient quartzite statue of a seated man buried close to the surface of the desert, the culture ministry said on Tuesday.

The statue, about life-size at 149 cm (five feet) tall, was found north of the smallest of Giza's three main pyramids, the tomb of the fourth dynasty Pharaoh Mycerinus, who ruled in the 26th century BC, the ministry said in a statement.

The man was wearing a shoulder-length wig and was seated in a simple chair, his right hand clenched on his knee and holding an object. His left hand was resting on his thigh.

The culture ministry said the statue had a number of cracks in a shoulder, its chest and base, and some facial features had been worn away. The head of the statue was only about 40 cm (16 inches) below ground level.

The statue bore no inscriptions, making it hard to identify, though the style suggested it might date to the early years of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, close to Mycerinus's time.

Earth Times

Cairo Egyptian archeologists discovered a 4,000-year-old statue as they carried out routine cleaning work at one of the Giza pyramids on Tuesday. The 149-centimetre-long statue was found buried just 40 centimetres below the surface of the sand in the northern part of the King Men-Kau-Re's pyramid (2551-2523 BC).

The statue is of an unidentified person wearing a medium-length wig, sitting on a chair with his right arm stretched on his knee and holding an unidentified object in his fist, Zahi Hawas, secretary general of the Egyptian Higher Council for Antiquities, said.

Bloomberg

Thanks Rhio.

Egyptian archaeologists digging around the Pyramids of Giza have discovered a statue of a man that may date back 4,500 years to the Old Kingdom of Pharaohnic rule.

The 149-centimeter statue is of a sitting man wearing a wig down to his shoulders, with his left hand on his thigh and his right hand holding his right knee, Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, said in a statement today.

The statue was discovered 40 centimeters below the ground near the pyramid of Menkaure, the fourth dynasty ruler of Egypt who has the smallest pyramid of the three on the Giza plateau, according to the statement.

Also in Spanish at El Universal:

El Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades de El Cairo informó hoy que la estatua de cuarcita se encontraba muy cerca de la pirámide de Micerino. Estaba en la planicie de las pirámides, por la que pasan a diario miles de turistas, a sólo 40 centímetros bajo la arena.

El presidente del Consejo, Zahi Hawass, explicó que la estatua muestra a un hombre sentado con peluca y no tiene inscripciones. El estilo de la pieza, de 1,5 metros de alto, indica que se trata de una obra del Imperio Antiguo, cuando se construyeron también las pirámides de Giza, refirió DPA.

La pirámide de Micerino, contruida en torno al año 2520 antes de Cristo, es la más pequeña de las tres en Giza, en las afueras de El Cairo. La estatua no se halló en una excavación arqueológica, sino en el marco de la reorganización de las visitas turísticas.

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