Egypt Museum

Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia

“Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia”, also known as “Progress”, was the proposal of erecting a neoclassical colossal statue at the Suez Canal entryway in Port Said, Egypt.

Designed in the late 1860s by French artist Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the statue was planned to be that of a robed female named “Saeid Misr” or “Upper Egyptian” bearing a torch. The monument was inspired by the colossal seated figures of king Ramesses II at Abu Simbel, and was intended to be 86 feet (26 metres) tall, with a pedestal that rose to 48 feet (15 metres).

Bartholdi's watercolour conceptual rendering for "Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia"
Bartholdi’s watercolour conceptual rendering for “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia”, which would later become the “Statue of Liberty”, 1869.

The Khedive, however, denied the proposed statue due to its high cost, and in 1869 the Port Said Lighthouse, designed by François Coignet, was built in the same place.

Following the dissolution of the Egyptian endeavour, Bartholdi repurposed his design as “Liberty Enlightening the World”, also known as the “Statue of Liberty”, which was placed in New York Harbour in 1886.