A GIANT ancient Egyptian statue abandoned for 15 years in the grounds of a Cairo hospital has finally been given a home in a museum, Egypt’s antiquities chief said on Monday. The statue was moved to the Arab Contractors hospital for unknown reasons from a quarry in the Red Mountain region east of Cairo, said the secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities Gaballah Ali Gaballah. The 4.5-metre-high human statue, which has pieces missing due to cracks which have formed between different types of rock, has been moved to the Obelisk museum in Matariya in eastern Cairo, Gaballah said. He said it was difficult to say who the statue represented, but Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper said it was the likeness of the pharaoh Ramses II who reigned in the 13th century BC. – AFP