Archaeologist in Egypt have unveiled the second of two restored statues of Amenhotep III, which were toppled by an earthquake more than three thousands years ago.

An international team of archaeologists and Egyptologists headed by Abdelkarim Karrar and Hourig Sourouzian unveiled the second of the two colossal statues on the west bank of the Nile on Sunday.

An earthquake caused the statues to crumble, and it has lain in the river Nile in hundreds of pieces for 3,200 years, ravaged by time and water currents.

Raising the statues was considered an an emergency to avoid further damage to the stones, and the pieces were raised in two stages over a period of 12 months.

Pieces of the first statue were raised using compressed air cushions between January and March of 2014, and rebuilt on the west bank of the Nile using resins and steel splints into a huge 12 metre high statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep III striding forward.

In November, the archaeologists moved onto raising the stones from the second statue, which has now been reassembled into a statue nearly 13 metres high and weighing 100 tonnes, which shows the pharaoh wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt and holding a papyrus roll inscribed with his name in each hand.

The two statue are part of a larger temple, which the archaeologists hope to restore and build into a museum, with the project funded entirely by private donations, according to Global Post.

Amenhotep III, also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty and the son of Pharoah Thutmose IV. He ruled Egypt from the country’s then capital in Thebes from 1386 to 1349 BC, during a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of its artistic and political power.