Name: Egypt unveils newly restored statues of Amenhotep III in Luxor
Uploaded: 2025-12-15T16:07:43.773Z
Duration: 2 min 19 s
Description: After two decades of restoration, two huge alabaster statues of Amenhotep III are back where they belong – at the king’s mortuary temple in Luxor.

After two decades of restoration, two huge alabaster statues of Amenhotep III are back where they belong – at the king’s mortuary temple in Luxor.

Luxor

After more than 19 years of restoration, the Colossi of Amenhotep III have been returned to their original location at the king's mortuary temple in Luxor. The statues, which were toppled by an earthquake over a millennium ago and found in a fragmented state, were reassembled and unveiled in a ceremony.

The restoration was led by an Egyptian-German team and is part of efforts to preserve what is considered Egypt's largest and richest temple complex. Officials hope the re-erected statues will attract new visitors and contribute to the recovery of Egypt's tourism sector, which has faced challenges in recent years.

Egypt unveils newly restored statues of Amenhotep III in Luxor

After two decades of restoration, these huge statues of Amenhotep III are back where they belong, at the King's mortuary temple in Luxor. They were unveiled at a ceremony on Sunday. Known as the Colossi of Memnon, they represent the prominent pharaoh who ruled ancient Egypt in the 14th century BCE, during the country's prosperous and peaceful New Kingdom period. The statues in the funerary temple were toppled by a powerful earthquake some 1,200 years ago. When they found actually those statues, they found it separated in very fragmentary conservation and state and of course they have to work on it for more than 19 years in order to put everything together in order to collect all several pieces and today we are celebrating actually the finishing and erecting of these two close statues that it will add a lot to the Luxor in general and to the funerary temple of the King, trying to revive how this funerary temple of King Amenhotep III looked like a long time ago. The Colossi preside over the King's Temple, a 35 hectare complex on the western banks of the Nile. It is thought to be the largest and richest temple in Egypt and is often compared to the Temple of Karnak, also in Luxor. In the late 1990s, an Egyptian-German mission began working in the temple area, including the reassembly and renovation of the Colossi. This project has in mind and I hope we fulfilled not only what we had projected, our project but our dreams also, to save the last remains of a once prestigious temple, it was the largest of all. With the statues back where they belong, officials hope they'll attract new visitors and help revive the country's tourism sector that suffered since the 2011 uprising and COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you.

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