This is something of a moving story, quite literally. For the past 50 years, a colossal red granite statue of Ramesses II, one of the mightiest pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty, has languished in downtown Cairo's Ramesses Square. The square, one of Cairo's busiest, marks the city's main railway station. Now, the decision has been made to move the statue to the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is being planned for the Giza Plateau, and should be built by around 2010. To this end, archaeological, geological and architectural studies of the statue are currently underway, and state-of-the-art techniques are being used to record the statue before the move, both to provide a permanent, accurate record of the statue, and to provide the data necessary to move the massive monolith safely.

Lon Addison from the Centre for Design Visualisation at the University of California, Berkeley coordinated the study of the spatial form of the statue. Among the key digital heritage consultants involved in its recording were Plowman Craven 3D. Along with colleagues Björn Van Genechten from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and Egyptian consultant Dr Tariq Al Murri, we used the HDS2500 laser scanner to create an accurate 3D computer model of Ramesses' effigy. We complimented the scanning with a range of other image-based 3D data collection techniques, including photogrammetry. Together, these techniques provided a full record of the statue in its minutest detail - including all of the joints, visible fault lines and cracks. This allowed for a structural analysis of the component pieces of the statue before it is dismantled and moved, as well as the production of traditional survey drawings such as plans and elevations. In turn, this will supply the necessary information needed to create a purpose built secure cradle to hold the mighty statue. Though the statue still stands shrouded in scaffolding, and the statue has yet to be moved, the laser scanning has produced not just the first accurate measurements of the statue, but also a digital record of the statue that is state-of-the-art.