>Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, also known as Progress Carrying the Light to Asia, was a plan for a colossal neoclassical sculpture. Designed in the late 1860s by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the project was to be a statue of a robed female Saeid Misr or "Upper Egyptian" bearing a torch at the entryway of the Suez Canal in Port Said, Egypt.[1][2]
>The idea for a statue on the mouth of the Suez was inspired by Bartholdi's encounter with ancient Egyptian giant statuary at Abu Simbel.[3] Bartholdi further researched the ancient Colossus of Rhodes (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,
>After the failure of the Egyptian project, Bartholdi recycled his design as Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty, which was installed in the New York Harbor in 1886.[3]