Old Kingdom Statue Base Unearthed in Upper Egypt

News April 28, 2015

(Ministry of Antiquities)
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Egypt King Sahure
(Ministry of Antiquities)

ASWAN, EGYPT—The Luxor Times reports that the lower part of a rare statue carved with the name of King Sahure, the second king of the Old Kingdom’s Fifth Dynasty, has been discovered at El-Kab. The excavation, conducted by the Belgian mission, is directed by Dirk Huyge of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. The statue base was carved from fine-grained sandstone. The complete statue would have depicted King Sahure seated on a throne. There are only two known statues of King Sahure—one of them is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the other is at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir. For another recent Egyptological discovery, see “18th-Dynasty Tomb Discovered in Luxor.”

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