Colossal Ramses II Head Found at Behbeit El-Hagar

Egyptian archaeologists have recovered a 1.6-meter colossal royal head attributed to Ramses II, a second fragmentary royal statue also provisionally attributed to him, and an inscribed pink-granite block at Behbeit El-Hagar. Both statues should remain described as attributed to Ramses II while study continues: the second attribution rests on facial similarity, while the first bears a Horus name also used by other rulers.

 
 

What the Behbeit El-Hagar Excavation Found

Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery on October 13, 2026. Rescue work began after a resident found a carved stone while working on land in front of his home in the Nile Delta village and reported it to the local antiquities inspectorate. Officials then completed the legal steps for an archaeological excavation.

The first find is a head about 1.6 meters, or 5 feet 3 inches, high. Ramses II wears the Double Crown, combining the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. A surviving section of the statue’s back pillar carries his Horus name, Ka-nakht-mery-Maat. Hisham El-Leithy, secretary-general of the council, estimated that the complete monument, including its base, stood about 8.5 meters, or 28 feet, high. That reconstruction is roughly 5.3 times the height of the surviving head.

The second statue is represented by a substantial fragment about 2.4 meters long, but its legs and base are missing and the top of its royal nemes headdress is damaged. Its separately recovered head retains clear facial features. A pink-granite block about 1.3 meters long was found approximately one meter north of this statue.

Infographic by Art in Context, based on Ahram Online, Al Jazeera.

 
 

One Ramses II Identification Is Secure, One Is Not

The three discoveries do not carry equal evidentiary weight.

Object	Status	Released evidence
Colossal head	Securely Ramses II	His Horus name survives on the back pillar
Second statue	Provisional	Facial resemblance; no identifying name published
Granite block	Royal; relationship unresolved	Two titles survive; found near the second statue

That distinction has already blurred in coverage. The Ahram Online headline calls the finds “two colossal statues of Ramses II”, while its body accurately says the second is only believed to depict him. The Ministry’s announced basis is resemblance between the two faces, not a published inscription on the second figure.

The careful formulation is therefore one identified statue and one royal statue under study. Proximity, scale, and likeness make the proposed attribution plausible, but none of those replaces an inscription, an adjoining fragment, or a demonstrably undisturbed archaeological context.

 
 

What the Royal Names and Headdresses Actually Prove

The strongest identifier is Ka-nakht-mery-Maat, the Horus name on the first statue’s back pillar. Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities translates the same name on another Ramses II sculpture as “The Strong Bull, Beloved of Maat”. Unlike a general emblem of kingship, this name ties the Behbeit head to Ramses II’s formal titulary.

The Double Crown reinforces the image of rule over Upper and Lower Egypt, while the nemes on the second statue marks its wearer as royal. These visual attributes are central to ancient Egyptian art, but they are not unique portraits in the modern sense. The inscription supports the attribution of the first head to Ramses II but does not settle it by itself, because other rulers used the same Horus name; the second figure’s headdress and face likewise narrow the interpretation without establishing an identity.

The granite block preserves nesu-bity, “King of Upper and Lower Egypt,” and sa Ra, “Son of Ra.” Those phrases identify positions within royal titulary rather than a unique ruler by themselves. The wording released so far establishes a royal association at the findspot, but it does not yet show whether the block belonged to either statue, to an architectural setting, or to a separate monument.

A granodiorite statue of Ramses II from Karnak, now at the Museo Egizio in Turin. Photograph by Richard Mortel, hosted by Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

 
 

The Site Was Ramesside Before Its Famous Isis Temple

Behbeit El-Hagar is best known for the ruined granite sanctuary of Isis built much later. A peer-reviewed study of the site reports that Nectanebo II, who ruled from 360 to 342 BCE, built the temple; Ptolemy II completed inscriptions, and Ptolemy III extended it westward. Ramses II’s reign, about 1279 to 1213 BCE, ended roughly nine centuries before that construction sequence.

That gap does not make the newly found sculptures intrusions from an unknown place. The same study by Mahmoud A. Emam and Ehab Abd el-Zaher records earlier evidence at Behbeit: fragments bearing Ramses II’s name found during infrastructure work, a Ramesside column documented by Édouard Naville, and New Kingdom pottery and a massive mud-brick wall exposed in 2017–2018. The 2026 find is therefore new evidence for a Ramesside monumental phase at a site where such a phase had already been proposed, not the first sign that Ramses II was present there.

The sculptures may have belonged to that earlier setting, but the available evidence does not establish original placement. They could have remained near a Ramesside structure, been shifted during later building, or been reused. This is where archaeological context matters as much as style: an object can be securely dated and named while its route through a layered site remains uncertain.

Behbeit now joins the statue, inscribed block, older architectural fragments, pottery, and wall remains into a more substantial ancient-art record. Continued excavation can test whether those elements form one coherent Ramesside complex beneath or beside the later Isis sanctuary.

 

A Ptolemaic relief from the Temple of Isis at Behbeit El-Hagar showing a king and a ram-headed deity. Photograph by Richard Mortel, hosted by Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic; cropped.

 
 

What Is Established and What Remains Open

Officials attribute the 1.6-meter head to Ramses II, and the council’s scale estimate reconstructs its lost monument at about 8.5 meters including the base; the surviving Horus name supports but does not uniquely establish that attribution. The second statue remains an attribution, not an identification, because officials have cited facial similarity but no unique inscription. Earlier scholarship establishes that Ramesside material and a New Kingdom layer were already known at Behbeit, so the find strengthens an existing case for an earlier monumental phase. The statues’ original locations, the granite block’s exact function, and the second figure’s identity remain unresolved while excavation and study continue.