The Reconstruction of Amenhotep III

Two 14 m colossal sandstone statues of King Amenhotep III discovered in that king's mortuary temple in 1933 have been uncovered and packed to be shipped to a dryer climate to be reconstructed and consolidated with the intent of returning them to the mortuary temple.

The king's mortuary temple was in good condition only for a little more than a century after it was built in the first half of the fourteenth century BC. The Nineteenth Dynasty King Merenptah used many of the blocks from Amenhotep's temple in his own construction in the closing years of the thirteenth century BC.

The two statues in question were destroyed in a massive, well-recorded earthquake in 27 BC, where they collapsed and broke into pieces.