It’s made of granite and weighs more than one ton. It stood about 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) when it had its head. In ancient times it was smashed into several pieces on purpose. This was also done to the two other statues. It’s not known who did this or why. It happened “a long time after Taharqa,” said Anderson.
One idea is that there was a dynastic struggle. A group came to power in Nubia that was determined to eliminate reminders of Taharqa’s reign and that of this successors. Another possibility is that in 593 BC an Egyptian military force, led by pharaoh Psamtek II, succeeded in reaching Dangeil and decided to damage the statues.
The largest piece of Taharqa's statue is the torso and base. This part of the statue is so heavy that the archaeological team had to use 18 men to move it onto a truck.
“We had trouble moving him a couple hundred meters,” said Anderson. The move was “extremely well planned,” with the team spending eight to nine days figuring out how to accomplish it without the statue (or the movers) getting damaged.
Given the lack of moving equipment the team resorted to “traditional methods.” Anderson and Ahmed say that “the back of the statue was first protected with sacking after which a heavy plank of wood was attached to the backpillar. Trenches were dug under the statue to facilitate the attachment of the wood backing,”
The team than rotated the statue so that it rested on this wood. A platform of red-brick and silt was created beneath the statue. “The statue was raised upwards, one brick’s thickness at a time (approximately 80mm), using wooden and iron levers.” A team of 18 men then brought it to a truck, dragging it over an ancient wall.
Taharqa’s ancient statue movers would have had an even rougher job. The nearest granite quarry is at the third cataract – hundreds of kilometres up the Nile. The trip was “certainly many days” said Anderson, consisting of a river ride and in “some places dragging.”
The construction of the statue and the painstaking effort to move it to Dangeil “demonstrates how powerful he (Taharqa) was.”
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Upcoming in London: Forensic Aspects of Ancient Egypt with Joyce Filer
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/massive-statue-of-pharaoh-taharqa-discovered-deep-in-sudan-1862007.html