According to the US National Park Service, which oversees the monument in New York, French creator Frederic Auguste Bartholdi discovered his passion for large-scale sculptures during a trip to Egypt in 1855-1856, Agence France-Presse reported.
Bartholdi called his design "Egypt Brings Light to Asia." The sculpture significantly evolved over course of time, but originally was drawn as a veiled Arab peasant woman, according to Barry Moreno, the historian at the Statue of Liberty National Monument.
"Bartholdi produced a series of drawings in which the proposed statue began as a gigantic female fellah, or Arab peasant, and gradually evolved into a colossal goddess," added Edward Berenson, professor of history at New York University.
If Bartholdi conceived the statue as an Arab woman representing Egypt, that woman would most certainly have been Muslim, for at the time the majority of Egyptians were Muslims — around 86% in Alexandria and Cairo, and 91% in other regions, according to the Smithsonian.
When French historian Edouard de Laboulaye came up with the idea of a monument presented by the French people to the United States representing "Liberty Enlightening the World," Bartholdi transformed his original design into the Statue of Liberty as we know it today.
