Statue of goddess Isis Pharia 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. 

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. 

Head of Isis Pharia - Graeco-Roman Museum -Alexandria Pharia Isis, or as on coins of Julian the Apostate it is written FARIA, was so called according to Pliny, from Pharus, in Egypt, an island joined by a bridge to the Roman colony of Alexandria.  

Isis here means the protectress of the Pharus, on which the light-house was built. Isis is fabled to have been the daughter of Inachus, King of the Argives, and to have been transformed by Jupiter into a cow; and having afterwards been restored to her pristine form was made a goddess, and adored as such by the Egyptians above all other divinities. 

Isis Pharia statue, which is one of the largest statues to be displayed in the museum, pointing out that it is made of pink granite and divided into three parts: A crown of the sun disk, topped by the two feathers of Isis; an upper part consisting of the head and chest with a length of 265 cm, a width of 185, and a weight of 7.5 tons; and a lower part that is 380 cm long, 120 cm wide, and weighs about 10 tons. 

Othman further stressed that for the first time these parts will be assembled and restored for the statue to be displayed in the museum's garden. 

Head of the Central Administration for Museums Sector Affairs Ali Dahi indicated that the statue of Isis Pharia was discovered by the archaeologist Kamel Abu al-Sa’adat in the 1960s, east of Qaitbay Citadel and the Eastern Port. 

It was recovered by the naval forces in 1962, when it was transferred to the Serapeum and Pompey’s Pillar area. In 1991, the statue was transferred to the Maritime Museum. As for the upper part of the statue and the crown, it was discovered by the submerged archaeological mission in the eastern port, and it was recovered, restored and displayed in the theater area of the Maritime Museum. 

The Graeco-Roman Museum houses a large number of Egypt's antiquities from the period roughly 300BC to the Arab Conquest in the 7th century. It was built in 1895 by Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Botti and has been renovated several times along the span of its history. It was last restored almost 20 years ago.

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.