Matariya Colossus: The Cairo Statue First Thought to Be Ramses II

Colossal Statue Found in Cairo in 2017, First Thought to Be Ramses II

In March 2017 an Egyptian and German team pulled the pieces of a colossal quartzite statue out of muddy groundwater in Matariya, a crowded working-class district of north-eastern Cairo. Early headlines called it a 3,000-year-old statue of Ramses II. Within a week, Egypt's antiquities minister said it most probably showed a later king, Psamtik I, who ruled from 664 to 610 BC. That would make it about 2,600 years old and, if confirmed, the largest statue of Egypt's Late Period ever found. The photographs below follow the dig, from the first sight of the torso in the water to the moment the crowned head was lifted out.

What was found, and where

The find was made on 9 March 2017 by a joint mission of Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Leipzig, which has been working in the area since 2005. The team recovered two large fragments: a torso with the lower part of the face, and the top of the head wearing a royal crown, along with smaller pieces such as the right ear and part of an eye. The complete figure is estimated to have stood about 8 metres (around 26 feet) tall. A limestone bust of Seti II, a grandson of Ramses II, was found at the same site.

Matariya sits on top of ancient Heliopolis, known to the Egyptians as Iunu, one of the great religious centres of the country. It was the chief cult centre of the sun god, worshipped as Atum and Ra, and its priests taught that creation began there when the first god rose from the primeval waters. A red granite obelisk of Senusret I, around 21 metres tall and probably the oldest obelisk still standing in its original place, survives in the district today. Most of the old city, however, was quarried for stone in the Middle Ages and now lies many metres below houses, markets and roads.

From Ramses II to Psamtik I

The first guess was understandable. The statue lay near remains of a temple linked to Ramses II, whose name appears on blocks across the site, and he was one of Egypt's most prolific builders. But about a week later the minister, Khaled El-Enany, said one of Psamtik I's five royal names was carved on the back pillar of the torso. Officials stressed that more fragments needed to be studied before the identification could be treated as final, and it is now generally described as Psamtik's.

Psamtik I founded the 26th, or Saite, Dynasty. He began as a ruler installed by the Assyrians in the Delta city of Sais, then brought the whole country under his control by around 654 BC, helped by Greek and Carian mercenaries. His reign opened a period in which Egypt deliberately looked back to its classical past, and the colossus fits that pattern: it was carved in a style that echoes statues made more than a thousand years earlier. Around 6,400 smaller quartzite fragments suggest that the statue was later deliberately destroyed, probably by heating the stone and then shattering it with cold water.

Photographs from the excavation

The torso lies half submerged in groundwater, with a broken piece of the face beside it. A rising water table, rubble and waste made the work slow and messy. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

The crowned upper part of the head, with its large carved ear, rests on the street after being raised, surrounded by onlookers. This fragment held some of the strongest clues to the statue's royal status. Photo: AFP.

A view into the excavation pit, with the pale quartzite torso visible under murky water and pump hoses running across the ground. Groundwater is a constant problem for archaeology in this part of Cairo. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

A local man watches the site while an excavator and a line of residents gather in the background. The dig drew crowds from the surrounding blocks of flats throughout the recovery. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

A worker stands beside the torso as an excavator bucket hovers close by. Heavy machinery was used to move the multi-tonne fragments out of the waterlogged ground. Photo: Xinhua / Rex.

Officials and archaeologists gather around the head fragment after it was lifted. The ear and the curve of the crown give a sense of the scale of the original figure. Photo: Khaled Elfiqi / EPA.

Workers feel for the edges of a fragment beneath the water. Much of the early work was done by hand, because the stone could not be seen clearly. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

An excavator works inside the flooded pit while team members guide the torso. The surrounding houses show how closely modern Matariya presses against the ancient remains. Photo: Xinhua / Rex.

A wider view of the pit, with the torso at the water's edge and spectators lining the rim. The trench is a small window into a buried city that once stretched across much of this district. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

The crowned head comes up out of the mud, still caked in earth. Raising it was one of the key moments of the recovery. Photo: Khaled Elfiqi / EPA.

Residents and workers crowd around the head after it reached ground level. For many in the neighbourhood, it was their first close look at an artefact from the city beneath their homes. Photo: Xinhua / Rex.

A carved limestone block with hieroglyphs and royal cartouches seen at the site. Inscribed blocks like this, many naming Ramses II, are part of why the colossus was first linked to him. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

Local children stand beside the head fragment among rubble and rubbish. The scene captures the uneasy mix of daily life and world heritage in Matariya. Photo: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters.

Watch the excavation

The Guardian filmed the recovery, including the moment the machinery lifted the head clear of the pit.

Where the statue went next

The two large fragments were taken, with help from Egypt's armed forces, to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square in central Cairo for conservation and temporary display. The long-term plan announced in 2017 was to show the statue at the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza pyramids, which at the time was expected to open in 2018. The opening slipped for years: the museum had a trial opening in October 2024 and was officially inaugurated on 1 November 2025. Its huge atrium is dominated by a different statue, an 11-metre colossus of Ramses II, which is easily confused with the Matariya find in news reports.

Why the Matariya find still matters

Beyond its size, the colossus drew attention to a site under heavy pressure. After the 2011 revolution, illegal building and rubbish dumping spread across some of the surviving archaeological plots in Matariya, and parts of the area were turned to other uses. Egyptian heritage campaigners such as Monica Hanna have organised clean-ups and argued that ancient Heliopolis could become a visitor attraction rather than a dumping ground. The 2017 discovery showed both how much still lies under the district and how hard it is to recover it.

It is also a useful lesson in how archaeology works. The first identification was a reasonable guess, made quickly and widely repeated. A single carved name on a back pillar changed it within days. Headlines that still describe the statue as Ramses II are repeating the first guess, not the later evidence.

Sources: Photographs by Mohamed Abd El Ghany (Reuters), AFP, Xinhua/Rex and Khaled Elfiqi (EPA); video by The Guardian; Archaeology Magazine: Cairo's colossus identified as Psammetich I; National Geographic: Massive statue of ancient Egyptian pharaoh found in Cairo; Apollo: Can a long-lost Egyptian colossus save ancient Heliopolis?; Wikipedia: Psamtik I; Wikipedia: Heliopolis (ancient Egypt); Wikipedia: Grand Egyptian Museum.

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