Egypt has unveiled a mᴀssive granite statue of Ramses II, the most powerful and celebrated of the ancient Pharaohs, after completing its restoration.

Standing 11 metres (36 feet) tall and weighi

ng 75 tonnes (82 tons), the statue was presented in a floodlit ceremony at the Luxor Temple on the banks of the Nile on Tuesday evening.

When the statue was discovered between 1958 and 1960 it was broken into 57 pieces.

Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great or Ozymandias, reigned more than 3,000 years ago.

He led several military expeditions and expanded the Egyptian Empire to stretch from Syria in the north to Nubia in the south.

The statue was displayed just hours after archaeologists unveiled the tomb of a nobleman from more than 3,000 years ago, the latest in a series of discoveries that Egypt hopes will revive a tourist business hit by political instability.

‘What we’re happy with is that (the kind of tourists drawn to) classical Egypt, Luxor, Aswan, Nile cruises … are back to normal levels again,’ said Hisham El Demery, chief of Egypt’s Tourism Development Authority.

However, an attack on Tuesday claimed by Islamic State near St. Catherine’s Monastery – one of the world’s most important Christian sites – revived fears for the Egyptian tourist sector.

The attack left one police officer ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and four others wounded.

The fame of Rameses II, the third king of the 19th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, is put down to his flair for self-publicity.

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He is remembered principally for the colossal statues he commissioned and for his mᴀssive building programme.

Dubbed Rameses the Great by the Egyptologists of the 19th century, his reign from 1279 to 1213BC marked the last peak of Egypt’s imperial power.

He ascended the throne as the third king of the Nineteenth Dynasty at the age of twenty-five.

It is thought that during his 67-year reign, he built more temples and fathered more children than any other pharaoh.

Experts say he understood that visibility was central to the success of his reign, and built bombastic structures to project his strength as a leader.

He founded a new capital, Piramesse and built temples throughout Egypt and Nubia. The most famous of these buildings is the Abu Simbel, cut into rock, and ‘the Ramesseum’ – his mortuary temple at Thebes.