Statue of Egyptian pharaoh discovered

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LUXOR, Egypt, April 26 (UPI) -- A 3,400-year-old statue of King Amenhotep III, believed to be the largest of its kind, has been discovered in Luxor, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said.

An expedition supervised by Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass that has been working at the site for seven months unearthed the statue, the Middle East News Agency reported Tuesday.

Carved from quartzite, the statue is more than 42 feet high and composed of seven large blocks.

The statue was one of a pair previously located at the northern entrance to the Amenhotep temple at Qurna in Luxor that had likely been destroyed during a 27 B.C. earthquake, Hawass said.

Archaeologists are cleaning the blocks to reassemble them at their original location, Hawass said.