Statue of Ramses moved from Cairo city square

Engineers moved the giant statue of pharaoh Ramses II from a congested square in central Cairo to a new location near the Great Pyramids on Friday in an effort to save it from pollution.

Onlookers lined the streets waving flags and cheering as the 3,200-year-old statue, surrounded by a convoy including 1,500 soldiers, was moved from Ramses Square aboard two flatbed trucks.

The statue, wrapped in thick plastic and padding and with a cage constructed around it, took 10 hours to make its slow, 35-kilometrejourney from the city square to the site of the future Grand Museum of Egypt — about 1.5 kilometres from the pyramids.

Egypt's director of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the 83-tonne statue had to be moved to protect it from exhaust fumes and other environmental hazards. But there were historical reasons for the move as well.

"We are moving it to save it, but we are also moving it to respect [it], because the ancient Egyptians, when they made a statue they did not intend to put it in a square," Hawass told the CBC's Leslie Ann Boctor.

"The idea of putting pharaonic statues in squares of towns is completely wrong. Statues were made to be in temples or tombs."

The statue originally resided in a temple at the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis until it was moved to the city square in the 1950s.

The Grand Museum to house the statue also contains King Tutankhamen's mummy and other treasures, but is not scheduled to open until 2010.

Ramses II presided over an era of great military expansion and brought Egypt unprecedented power during his reign from about 1304 to 1237 BC. He remains an iconic figure today, with his likeness appearing in postcards and his statue serving as a backdrop in Egyptian films.