Statue of goddess Isis Graeco Roman Museum in Alexandrea

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. 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. 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.