Saturday 26 October 2024

Statue of goddess Isis Graeco Roman Museum in Alexandrea

Statue of goddess Isis Graeco Roman Museum in Alexandrea
 Statue of goddess Isis Graeco Roman Museum 

Ptolemaic queen”, reads a sign beside an 11-metre Statue of goddess Isis in the form of the goddess Isis inside the newly reopened  Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. The 25-ton statue is one of many of similar design, but this one is the biggest, said Sobhi Ashour, professor of Graeco-Roman Art and Archaeology at Helwan University. 

Ashour added that the Isis statue was found in the 1960s by an Egyptian diver Kamel Abu el-Saadat north of the Qaitbay Citadel in the eastern port of Alexandria. Graeco-Roman Museum: Selfie with a stately statue “Take a selfie with Ptolemaic queen”, reads a sign beside an 11-metre  statue of a queen in the form of the goddess Isis inside the newly reopened  Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria. 

Statue of goddess Isis Graeco Roman Museum in Alexandrea
The 25-ton statue is one of many of similar design, but this one is the biggest, said Sobhi Ashour, professor of Graeco-Roman Art and Archaeology at Helwan University. Ashour added that the Isis statue was found in the 1960s by an Egyptian diver Kamel Abu el-Saadat north of the Qaitbay Citadel in the eastern port of Alexandria. The statue of the ‘selfie-genic’ queen is not alone. A black basalt statue of one of the Ptolemaic queens is portrayed as Isis. Her robes are carved so skillfully that you can imagine they might billow in a light breeze. 

The Graeco-Roman Museum has the only portrait of Cleopatra and that of her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes. This artwork dispels the myth that she was black, negroid, or resembling a Hollywood actress. Cleopatra VII was a Greek, after all, even if she did not look like Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film of the same name.

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