CAIRO.- This Friday, August 25th at 6am local time, when Cairo traffic is at its calmest, the colossal statue of 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II will begin its journey from outside Bab Al-Hadid train station in Cairo to its new home at the site of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Plateau. For over 50 years, exhaust fumes from trains, cars and buses, as well as subway vibrations, have been damaging the 3,200+ year old granite statue at Ramses Square, its home since the early 1950s, when it was taken from a temple at the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.

Archaeology enthusiasts, Egyptian history buffs, or simply anyone interested in great feats of engineering can witness Ramses' 24-hour journey from Cairo in Google Earth with the click of a mouse. This historic 16-mile relocation has been documented as a KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file which will overlay this route in Google Earth or Google Maps on the Google Blog at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-move-ramses-ii.html. In addition, broadcast-quality video footage is available from theNewsMarket at: http://thenewsmarket.com/Google.