The “Singing” Statue Which Illustrates the Graeco-Roman Relationship With Egypt’s Antiquity*

March 28, 2026

The “Singing” Statue Which Illustrates the Graeco-Roman Relationship With Egypt’s Antiquity*

Well, the new academic year is well and truly underway, and my first session of Curiosity and Conversations (a discussion of unusual sources or topics not normally covered by our syllabi) was Thursday night.

The first session was devoted to sources related to the so-called Colossus of Memnon. If you look this up online, you will often see this pluralised, because this name has been adopted for the modern site. It look like this:

Colossi of Memnon, July 2025. Picture credit: my friend Deborah Roberts.

But during the Roman imperial period, everyone knew of one Colossus of Memnon. It probably looked something like this:

Picture credit: Figure 8 from Karakhanyan, Avagyan, and Stadelmann (2016).

Yet the broken remains of an ancient statue were up there with the pyramids as a tourist destination for one reason only: as the stone was heated by the sun, it emitted a sound.

This was a natural phenomenon which modern scholars hypothesis was the result of expansion owing to the heat of the sun, and people in Roman times loved this kind of thing. Give them a seemingly unexplained wonder, and they would go crazy - and go to Egypt if they could. Yet, I never knew about this until about six weeks ago when a video about it came across by Facebook feed. Yes, I am that old; I use Facebook instead of Instagram. So, I suggested this as a topic for this semester's first session.

Now several elements of this topic fascinate me: the ancient tourist trade; the archaeological investigation of this site; the attempt to restore the statue in antiquity; and what it tells us about what the people of the Graeco-Roman world knew about Egypt's antiquity, and how they interacted with it. I have blogged about this before (Pliny, Egyptian History, and How To Remember That All Ancient History Is Not a Homogenous Mass.), and I am about to again.

What Was the Colossus of Memnon?

The Colossus of Memnon was one of two monolithic statues which stood before the mortuary temple of New Kingdom pharaoh Amenhotep III who died around 1351 BCE. They were made from single blocks weighting around 720 tons, and standing 18 m high of quartzite sandstone from near Cairo, 675 km away from their home on the west bank across from Thebes. When first placed their position within the mortuary complex would have been something like this:

Virtual reconstruction of the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, view from the northeast.
Picture credit: Study of the wall reliefs and other decorated architectural elements of the temple of Amenhotep III (c. 1382-1344 BC) in Kom el-Hettan (Luxor, Egypt).

This mortuary temple, like most of the ancient buildings, was in ruins when, sometime in the first century BCE, probably the second half, an earthquake struck the site and broke the top half of the northern colossus off. It was the resulting cracks in what remained which started to emit a sound when the sun rose. The earliest reference we have to this was from the geographer Strabo (Geography, 17.1.46):

After Apollonospolis one comes to Thebes (now called Diospolis) ... . Even now traces of its magnitude are pointed out, extending as they do for a distance of eighty stadia in length; and there are several temples, but most of these, too, were mutilated by Cambyses; and now it is only a collection of villages, a part of it being in Arabia, where was the city, and a part on the far side of the river, where was the Memnonium. Here are two colossi, which are near one another and are each made of a single stone; one of them is preserved, but the upper parts of the other, from the seat up, fell when an earthquake took place, so it is said. It is believed that once each day a noise, as of a slight blow, emanates from the part of the latter that remains on the throne and its base; and I too, when I was present at the places with Aelius Gallus and his crowd of associates, both friends and soldiers, heard the noise at about the first hour, but whether it came from the base or from the colossus, or whether the noise was made on purpose by one of the men who were standing all round and near to the base, I am unable positively to assert; for on account of the uncertainty of the cause I am induced to believe anything rather than that the sound issued from stones thus fixed.

This visit occurred sometime between 26 and 24 BCE because his companion, Aelius Gallus, was the prefect of Egypt (at this time Egypt was the personal possession of the Roman emperor and the prefect managed it on his behalf) for this period. Note that Strabo is not precise in his description of when exactly the earthquake took place, and he wasn't sure if someone was pulling a prank. Also note that he does not refer to the statue as "The Colossus of Memnon", although the reference to the "Memnonium" might have played a role in the later identification.

The historian Tacitus (Annals 2.61) uses the name "Colossus of Memnon" when describing the illegal trip of Germanicus, heir to the empire, to Egypt in 19 CE. Tacitus might have retro-fitted the name as he was writing nearly a century after the visit, but the there is another kind of source available to us: people paid to have inscription written into this nearly 1500 year old monument. In fact 108 inscriptions have been published, and the earliest datable inscription reads:

I, Servius . . . Clemns
in the consulate of Marcus Aurelius Cotta Messalinus,
heard the voice of Memnon and gave thanks.
Inscription 1

We know that Marcus Aurelius Cotta Messalinus was consul in 20 CE, just one year after Germanicus' illegal trip, so it is most probable that the moniker had been well established by then, not even 50 years after Strabo's visit.

Who Was Memnon?

Memnon was the king of the Ethiopians who fought on the side of Troy in the Trojan cycle, so was a well known throughout the classical world. Like Achilles he was the son of a goddess and a mortal, in his case Eos, Dawn (the rosy-fingered Dawn who Homer constantly referred to) and Tithonus, a Trojan prince who some sources say was the brother of Priam, king of Troy during the war. He was killed during the war by Achilles in something of a demi-god fight-off. While the story is not in the Iliad, one version of his involvement can be found in Smyrnaeus Posthomerica, (Bk 2. lines 100-666). This was a popular motif in visual arts, and a painting from Naples featuring it was described thus:

… these are Ethiopians and that this city is Troy and that it is Memnon, the son of Eos, who is being mourned. When he came to the defence of Troy, the son of Peleus, they say, slew him, mighty though he was and likely to be no whit inferior to his opponent. … You would not say that Memnon’s skin is really black, for the pure black of it shows a trace of ruddiness.
As for the deities in the sky, Eos mourning over her son causes the Sun to be downcast and begs Night to come prematurely and check the hostile army, that she may be able to steal away her son, no doubt with the consent of Zeus. And look! Memnon has been stolen away and is at the edge of the painting. Where is he? In what part of the earth? No tomb of Memnon is anywhere to be seen but in Ethiopia he himself has been transformed into a statue of black marble. The attitude is that of a seated person, but the figure is that of Memnon yonder, if I mistake not, and the ray of the sun falls on the statue. For the sun, striking the lips of Memnon as a plectrum strikes the lyre, seems to summon a voice from them, and by this speech-producing artifice consoles the Goddess of the Day.
Philostratus the Elder Imagines, 1.7 “Memnon”

Even in this description of a Homeric scene, the author can't help but add a reference to the Colossus of Memnon, even if it was factually incorrect, as the statue had no lips to move. In fact, Philostratus the Elder is not the only one to do this: Philostratus (a different but related Philostratus) Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 6.4, and Lucian Lover of Lies, 34.

So Memnon was a well-known figure, but the Ethiopian king during the Trojan War, not Egyptian. The identification of this broken statue seems to be the result of the remaining stone's relationship with sunrise. Pliny the Elder describes the phenomenon when describing stone from Ethiopia, even though he acknowledges that the stone from which the statues of Amenhotep were hewn was not from Ethiopia (Natural History, 36.58):

The Egyptians also discovered in Ethiopia what is called ‘basanites,’ stone which in colour and hardness resembles iron: hence the name they have given it. … Not unlike this, we are told, is the block in the shrine of Serapis at Thebes chosen for a statue of what is supposed to be Memnon; and this is said to creak every day at dawn as soon as the sun’s rays reach it.

So there is no reason to see this statue as belonging to Memnon except for this accidentally created phenomenon. Some people say the name of Memnon does bare a resemblance to Amenhotep, but I personally think this is a long bow they a drawing.

Did They Know About Amenhotep III?

Yes! And that is why I find the coopting of this statue's identity maddening.

The Greek geographer Pausanias wrote about the Colossus of Memnon in his Description of Greece (1.42.3) when he as meant to be describing Attica:

…the colossus in Egypt made me marvel far more than anything else. In Egyptian Thebes, on crossing the Nile to the so-called Pipes, I saw a statue, still sitting, which gave out a sound. The many call it Memnon, who they say from Aethiopia overran Egypt and as far as Susa. The Thebans, however, say that it is a statue, not of Memnon, but of a native named Phamenoph, and I have heard some say that it is Sesostris. This statue was broken in two by Cambyses, and at the present day from head to middle it is thrown down; but the rest is seated, and every day at the rising of the sun it makes a noise, and the sound one could best liken to that of a harp or lyre when a string has been broken.

Yes, such was the draw of Memnon, writer referenced this colossus when talking about Attica, but he shows that it was known that the local people knew their history and that this was a statue of their king. This name does not match any of Amenhotep III's five Egyptian names, but Phamenoph is close to the name given to him in Greek, Amenophis.

Visitors to the the Colossus of Manetho also knew this. One of the inscriptions I mentioned before even mention that the locals were telling people that this was an Egyptian king. One of the women who formed part of the retinue of Roman empress Sabina, wife of Hadrian, who accompanied the pair on their 130 CE trip to Egypt, Julia Balbilla, had three inscriptions engraved into the colossus, one which acknowledged the same name given by Pausanias who visited the colossus, and a another in which she describes speaking to the priests who provided yet another name:

I, Balbilla, heard, from the speaking stone,
the divine voice of Memnon or Phamenoth.
I came here with our lovely queen Sabina,
when the sun held its course during the first hour,
in the fifteenth year of the emperor Hadrian's rule,
Hathyr was on its twenty-fourth day.|
On the twenty-fifth day of the month of Hathyr.
Inscription 31

When in the company of august Sabina
I was beside Memnon.
Son of Dawn and reverend Tithonus, Memnon,
seated opposite Zeus’s Theban city,
or (should I call you) Amenoth, Egyptian king,
as the priests claim, learned in the ancient stories,
greetings! And speaking out, favorably welcome her too,
the noble wife of the emperor Hadrian.
A barbarian man cut off your tongue and ears,
the godless Cambyses. But surely, with his wretched death,
he paid the penalty, pierced by the same point of the sword
with which he, pitiless man, killed the divine Apis.
But I don’t think that this statue of you could ever perish,
and I sense in my heart a soul hereafter immortal.
For my parents and my grandparents were pious,
Balbillus the wise and Antiochus the king:
Balbillus was the father of my mother the queen,
and King Antiochus was my father’s father.
From their race, I, too, have obtained noble blood,
and these are my writings, Balbilla the pious.
Inscription 29

It is worth noting how Balbilla in Inscription 29 cites her heritage. She does not mention some of other paternal forebears: Tiberius Claudius Balbillus, the Prefect of Egypt (55-59 CE) for Nero, and his father Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus, who was the astrologer of Tiberius. One of these men was the head of the Museum at Alexandria, but there isn't a consensus as to which of them. In any case, Balbilla, In addition to her links to Syria, she also had family links in Egypt. Indeed, Tiberius Claudius Balbillus organised the removal of the sand which had covered the Sphinx at the request of local people. This might hint at a family tradition of respecting local Egyptian people and their history; her personal actions in this field are shown in her inscriptions.

Later Christian chronographers also recognised that the true identity of this statue. When they included the timelines provided by the Egyptian historian Manetho, who wrote in Greek (I have written a second blog relating to Manetho), they added to Manetho's entry for "Amenophis III":

This is the king who was reputed to be Memnon and a speaking statue.

This is included in all Fragments 52, 53(a), and 53(b) as numbered in the Loeb edition and translation of Manetho. Manetho wrote his History of Egypt around 275 BCE, at least two centuries prior to the the earthquake which resulted in the remains of this statue being identified as Manetho. This identification had to have been added by a later author. I would say the writers to whom these fragments are attributed to (Julius Africanus and Eusebius), but the identical phrasing of the note makes me wonder if there was another writer between Manetho and the use of his history before the Christian chronographers. Regardless of how this identification entered this source, it shows that the identity of the Colossi was known in the Roman period.

The fragments of Manetho (fragments 55, 56(a), and 56(b) within these chronographies also include include the Trojan War. When discussing Dynasty Nineteen, they record variations of the following:

Thuoris, who in Homer is called Polybus, husband of Alcandra, and in whose reign Troy was taken, reigned for 7 years.
Manetho, History of Egypt, Fragment 56(a)

While we regard the Trojan War as a myth, in antiquity it was widely understood as the point in time were recorded events cease to be regarded as legend and enter the realm of history. Historians like Diodorus Siculus (Library of History, 1.4.6-1.6.1) record this as the first solidly recognised historical event, so its inclusion in chronographies like this is perfectly logical. It also indicates that people were not uniformly trying to say Amenhotep III was Memnon. The identification of the colossus as Memnon was not widespread syncretism; it was misinformation.

Misinformation and the Colossus of Memnon

The re-identification of the Colossus of Memnon is not the only misinformation which was spread in relation to this tourist attraction. The cause of the destruction of the statue was known, and Strabo was quite explicit that it was an earthquake which toppled its upper part. However in his description of Thebes he (and possibly other sources which did not survive) sowed the seeds for another story:

... there are several temples, but most of these, too, were mutilated by Cambyses ... Here are two colossi, which are near one another and are each made of a single stone; one of them is preserved, but the upper parts of the other, from the seat up, fell when an earthquake took place, so it is said.

Cambyses mutilated temples in the area of Thebes and an earthquake broke one of the colossal statues: Strabo is explicit! Yet Pausanias goes ahead and writes:

This statue was broken in two by Cambyses, and at the present day from head to middle it is thrown down; but the rest is seated...

He did not mention any earthquake, and the statue is in its present condition owing to the actions of the Persian king Cambyses. And this is reflected in a number of the inscription engraved onto the monument. Julia Balbilla states in Inscription 29:

A barbarian man cut off your tongue and ears,
the godless Cambyses.

Giving her the benefit of the doubt given her acknowledgement of the monument's true history maybe she is referring to damage done before the toppling of the top part of the statues. But the other references to Cambyses explicitly blame him for the condition of the statue as witnessed at that time:

In these elegiac verses, I, Petronianus, honor you,
giving to the speaking god gifts from the Muses;
from my father I have the name Aurelius, and I am an Italian man.
But you, lord, grant to me to live a long time.
Many come together here to discover if Memnon
still preserves a voice within what remains of his body.
But he, sitting without chest or head, speaks,
complaining to his mother of Cambyses’ outrage.
And when the sun, shining, sends forth rays,
he announces the day to those mortals present.
Inscription 2

One Caecilia Trebulla, who might have accompanied Hadrian and Sabina in 130 CE, goes even further into fantasy:

I, Caecilia Trebulla,
after hearing Memnon, wrote (this):
“Cambyses shattered me, this stone (you see) here,
a statue molded in the shape of an eastern king.
Long ago I had a lamenting voice, mourning
the sufferings of Memnon, but Cambyses took it away.
Now indeed the sounds are inarticulate and unintelligible
that I cry out, remnants of my former fortune.”
Inscription 94

The idea that the statue actually spoke words also appears in literary references in which the authors had not seen the statue or were willing to lie. In the lie category and thus could be considered disinformation if not for the fact that he included this in his "Lover of Lies", is the Greek satirist Lucian:

When I was living in Egypt ... I took it into my head to sail up to Koptos and go from there to the statue of Memnon in order to hear it sound that marvellous salutation to the rising sun. Well, what I heard from it was not a meaningless voice, as in the general experience of common people; Memnon himself actually opened his mouth and delivered me an oracle in seven verses, and if it were not too much of a digression, I would have repeated the very verses for you.
Lucian, Lover of Lies, 34

Lucian had travelled to Egypt and might have even died there. The likelihood that he did not know the true condition of the Colossus of Memnon is remote. I cannot be sure about Philostratus (possibly the father-in-law of the Philostratus quoted above). After stating that the statue of Memnon was in an Ethiopian city which was destroyed over time, he stated:

The statue itself faces the sun, and is still beardless. It is of dark stone, with both its feet together like the style of Daedalus’s time, and presses its arms straight down on its throne, in the position of a sitter just getting up. This position, the expression of its eyes, and the celebrated look of its lips, as if it was about to speak, did not seem particularly wonderful to them at first, they say, because none of it seemed lifelike. But when the sun’s ray struck the statue, as it did at sunrise, they could not withhold their amazement.
It immediately spoke as the ray touched its lips, and fixed its eyes cheerfully on the light, as sunbathers do.
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 6.4

I haven't quoted the description of the site as this blog is already huge, but it echoes some of Strabo's description. However the description of the stance of the arms and legs are accurate, while the description of his head is complete fantasy.

It seems that the phenomenon of the "singing" of this colossus at dawn captured an audience throughout the Roman world: people wrote of it fantastically when they likely hadn't seen it; they re-imagined its past to their own interests; and they visited it if they could.

The Colossus of Memnon as a Tourist Destination

The Colossus became as synonymous with Egypt as the pyramids. When the Latin satirist Juvenal decided to target his bile at Egypt he wrote:

.... is there anyone who doesn’t know the kind of monsters that crazy Egypt worships? One district reveres the crocodile, another quakes at the ibis, glutted with snakes. The sacred long-tailed monkey’s golden image gleams where the magic chords reverberate from crumbling Memnon and ancient Thebes lies in ruins with its hundred gates.
Juvenal, Satire 15, lines 1-8.

It became one of the destinations one had to visit if you were fortunate enough to do so. If you were a Roman senator or a prominent member of the equestrian class, you could not just jump on, hire, or build (some of these people were the ancient equivalent to today's "super-yacht-beware-of-orcas" class people) a ship. You had to have permission from the emperor himself to visit Egypt. Someone who broke this rule was Germanicus with his 19 CE visit. He did not get approval from Tiberius before he and his wife visited, and he died in strange circumstances afterwards which people attributed to his unwillingly adoptive father, Tiberius (if you want to know more about this saga of political intrigue and accusations of poisoning and destructive magic, search for the "Conspiracy of Piso" - it's a rollicking tale). This limit certainly influenced who visited the site, and who left their inscriptions behind them. I find Tacitus' description interesting as he records what Germanicus wanted to see:

But other marvels, too, arrested the attention of Germanicus: in especial, the stone colossus of Memnon, which emits a vocal sound when touched by the rays of the sun; the pyramids reared mountain high by the wealth of emulous kings among wind-swept and all but impassable sands; the excavated lake which receives the overflow of Nile; and, elsewhere, narrow gorges and deeps impervious to the plummet of the explorer.
Tacitus, Annals, 2.61

Here we see the Colossus of Memnon placed on as high a priority as the pyramids. And this appears elsewhere too:

Well, one time Demetrius happened to have gone into Egypt to see the pyramids and the statue of Memnon, for he had heard that the pyramids, though high, cast no shadow, and that Memnon utters a cry to the rising sun. Eager, therefore, to see the pyramids and to hear Memnon, Demetrius had cruised off up the Nile six months before, leaving behind him Antiphilus, who feared the journey and the heat.
Lucian, Toxaris or Friendship, 27

Severus himself in later years used to always claim that he had found this journey [to Egypt] very enjoyable, because he had taken part in the worship of the god Serapis, had learned something of antiquity, and had seen unfamiliar animals and strange places. For he visited Memphis, Memnon, the Pyramids, and the Labyrinth, and examined them all with great care.
Historia Augusta, Septimius Severus, 17.4

We know how the allure of the pyramids is used in tourism campaigns today, but the sound this broken statue made was probably the single greatest reason why pleasure trips were taken to Upper Egypt. While the Valley of the Kings was visited (these were the "Pipes" Pausanias referred to and likely the narrow gorges mentioned by Tacitus) as shown by Roman era graffiti, the chance to hear Memnon was the primary goal. Apparently, it is believed that Hadrian and Sabina were quite the travel "influencer" couple, and the evidence for visits to the site increased after this imperial trip. Over time, a tradition developed that it was good luck to hear it.

It is believed that the site was being managed by the local priests with whom Julia Balbilla spoke, and it appears that there were local professionals inscribing the texts onto the colossus' legs and feet. So this would have been paid for by people; the platform of the statue was 4 metres high, at least originally, this is not some sneaky naughty tourists behaviour. So people who had inscriptions left had some extra money in their purse, but that also includes members of the military already serving in Egypt. Given Strabo's description of the town of Thebes when he visited (and perhaps Philostratus' description of the home of the statue), Thebes was impoverished when the earthquake struck which broke what was to become known as the Colossus of Memnon. The tourism it provoked might have improved the condition of the region significantly.

This means for more than two hundred years, the fate of Thebes was seemingly tied to that of the broken statue.

Restoration Leading to Destruction

The last datable inscription on the Colossus of Memnon date to 205 CE. The last literary reference to it comes from the Chronicon of St Jerome, a Latin text that created historical timelines lining up the various Mediterranean kingdoms. He based his work on Eusebius, so he also wrote: "Of Egypt, Amenophis, for 31 years. This is the Amenophis, whom they believe to be Memnon, the talking stone." But unlike the other fragments, some later manuscripts of the Chronicon add:

In fact, his statue was said to give out a voice at sunrise, until the advent of Christ.

This is the only extant source for the silencing of the Colossus of Memnon. We have no idea as to what affect this had on the community of Thebes, but it can't have been good. What makes this all the more tragic is that it is likely that the destruction of the phenomenon appears to be the unintended consequence of trying to restore it.

The colossus as it appears today is the result of a Roman era attempt to restore the torso and head using blocks mined around Aswan. Since the mid-1800s, the prevailing wisdom was that the restoration occurred during the reign of Septimius Severus: the last historical reference was a visit by that emperor and the last datable inscription dates to his reign. Glen Bowersock suggested an alternative in 1984: Queen Zenobia of Palmyra who annexed Egypt in 274. This theory is based on evidence for other restorative work done during her short control of Egypt.

This theory is weakened, though not disproven, but archaeological works undertaken between 2009 and 2011. Four wooden wedges were discovered which had been used to hold blocks together before lime mortar was used to fill the spaced between, thus attaching the new torso. Samples were taken for analysis indicating the use of two different pieces of word were used to make the wedges, and the Carbon 14 dating indicate that the trees from which that timber was hewn were felled between 24 and 137 CE for the first sample, and 44 BCE and 232 CE for the second sample. No, I cannot explain why the difference in the date ranges between the two samples; no it is not a typo on my behalf (I triple checked); and the authors Karakhanyan, Avagyan, and Stadelman just throw out the dates like such a difference is standard (maybe it is, I don't currently have the time to go on a side quest on the ins and outs of C14 dating). Now the wedges could have been made any time after the wood was harvested, and Egypt is not conducive to wood rot that we commonly associate with exposure to water, but dry rot is a thing. In any case, these date do not overlap Zenobia's control of Egypt, and I do not know how long one might reasonably expect lumber to be able to provide strong wedges in Upper Egypt. In my inexpert opinion, the dating might suggest an earlier date for the disastrous restoration.

What made this disastrous was the lime mortar. There is a general consensus that mortar getting into the cracks of the original statue likely prevented to the expansion and contraction which generated the sound. In trying to restore the statue, the very special feature of the statue which had made it a famous tourist destination was inadvertently destroyed.

So how ancient was the Colossus of Memnon really?

While I could say that the Colossus of Memnon was only as old as the phenomenon existed, that isn't the point I am trying to make. I have already given the dates, but sometime it is easy to see ancient history as one homogenous mass of events; everything before a variously defined date. When I started as an undergrad in 1997 that was often 476 - with the overthrow of the last western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, in 476 CE, but now that boundary often shifts and occasionally disappears altogether. And in the case of Egyptian history, the term "ancient" really does flatten a complicated timeline.

What I am trying to convey is a sense of the lengths of time the history this blog has dealt with. This is not as long as a similar timeline I created for the pyramids, but it is still sizeable.

Timeline One: From the construction of the colossi of Amenhotep III to St. Jerome's Chronicon. Click here for larger version.

When St Jerome mentions the Amenhotep, he was writing about someone who died 1731 years before.

When people identified the colossus as Memnon, by Jerome's reckoning it is almost 400 years after Amenhotep III's death. By the calculations of the Greek historian Eratosthenes, the fall of Troy is only 167 years after the "fall" of Amenhotep III.

Timeline Two: If the dates from Timeline One were superimposed with St. Jerome's Chronicon positioned at 2026. Click here for a larger version.

For us, a rather different way of viewing the past can be imagined if we imagine that St. Jerome was writing today. If he were, his note about Amenhotep III and his statue would be like writing about something that happened in 295 CE.

I cannot impress upon people enough that the history of ancient history as it lives in the modern imagination - pyramids, tombs, Tutankhamon - was to people of the Classical Mediterranean world as ancient Greece and Rome are to us.

Ideas and Discussions Resulting From the Event

One of the reasons I continue to help arrange these sessions, apart from trying to expand student understanding of just how damn weird the ancient world was, is that discussion results in fantastic ideas and people pose questions which make me think about the topic in question differently. Despite the length of the blog, I would like to share a few of these from Thursday evening.

1. If the priests knew who these statues represented and were in control of the site, why were they allowing the statues to be written all over? Might that be desecration?
I never gave that a thought! My response, which I acknowledged might be completely wrong, was to hearken upon some of the work of Egyptologist Kara Cooney. Her research on the recycling of burial goods, added to the theory of some Egyptologists (maybe her too - I am winging this on half remembered material) that the wealth locked up in tombs was not meant to be removed forever. The recycling of funerary sarcophagi and the like suggests an attitude that the needs of the present outweigh the ownership of the past. On this basis, I imagine that priests, seeing the condition of their home town (a "collection of villages) and the relative poverty (yes, I know that as an agrarian society they were probably doing okay), would have taken the pragmatic view of "the needs of now outweigh the ownership of the past; if these foreigners want to rename Amenhotep and bring money in, we will participate."

2. There was a discussion about whether there was a sliding scale in cost relative to position and size for the placement of inscriptions on the monument. This was because all of the inscriptions relating to Hadrian and Sabina's visit were at the very front of the monument. Rosenmeyer, who wrote an entire book on the ruins and the Roman-era inscriptions includes maps of the positions of inscriptions, primarily based on those of Bernand and Bernand (1960), which does not show the position of all of them. Why? Because inscriptions on the side of the leg are difficult to show on a forward facing outline of a leg. I had shown the inscription (Number 36) of a local government official who had heard Memnon while sailing on the Nile, but it was positioned to the side and thus not mapped by Rosenberger. We all decided that maybe that was a cheaper spot. I think the idea has a lot of merit, but unless we find a papyrus providing a pricing guide for inscriptions, ultimately unprovable. I think the size question, is just plain common sense; you take up more space and the mason inscribing your words had to work longer. Surely it cost more.

3. In a world where we had unlimited resources and money, wouldn't it be wonderful to undertake various scans to try see if it was possible to determine the actual shape of the statue and its cavities to conduct experiments to see the potential acoustic qualities which resulted in "Memon's" singing, moaning, speaking etc. We know it would never happen and might be a complete failure, but it is lovely to imagine.

4. On the humorous side, someone did say it would have been ironic if all the charges to have inscriptions made were set aside to pay for the restoration. In all honesty, I am shocked I didn't have that dark thought myself.

There was likely many other interesting points raised that I will remember after I hit the publish button. I will not mourn this fact, as you are a champion for reading this far!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This waaaayyyyyy too long blog only addresses one part, but the larger part, of what I discussed on Thursday night. My thought on the fragmentary Egyptian historian Manetho will be covered in a forthcoming blog.

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Spare a talent

The “Singing” Statue Which Illustrates the Graeco-Roman Relationship With Egypt’s Antiquity*

What Was the Colossus of Memnon?

Who Was Memnon?

Did They Know About Amenhotep III?

Misinformation and the Colossus of Memnon

The Colossus of Memnon as a Tourist Destination

Restoration Leading to Destruction

So how ancient was the Colossus of Memnon really?

Ideas and Discussions Resulting From the Event

Further Reading and Bibliography

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