Heading out towards the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, two imposing statues rise against the horizon, massive monuments dedicated to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. These colossus stone figures reach nearly 60ft high and are estimated to weigh about 720 tons, especially impressive when you consider they were each carved from single blocks of quartzite sandstone that had been dragged over 400 miles across the desert sands.

These statues have sat on the Theban necropolis for nearly 3,500 years, the mortuary temple they once guarded long since crumbled and destroyed by earthquakes and the flooding Nile. Intriguingly, the common name now used for these figures is “The Colossi of Memnon”, Memnon being an Ethiopian King and Trojan war hero from Greek Mythology who was slain by Achilles. These statues were also rumoured to have oracle powers, making them statues a popular destination for early Greek travellers.

Pharoah Amenhotep III ruled Egypt for nearly 40 years, estimated around 1388 to 1351 BCE. His long rule was succeeded by his son, Amenhotep IV (also known as Akhenaten), and his grandson, Tutankhamun. Amenhotep III is considered by many as one of the greatest Egyptian Pharoah’s; he had a peaceful and prosperous reign and Egypt was both powerful and wealthy under his command. With significant resources at his disposal, Amenhotep III planned a massive mortuary complex for himself, one he called the Temple of Millions of Years. This sprawling complex was the largest built on the Theban Necropolis, and Amenhotep III designed a spectacular monument to cement his status as a living god. Unfortunately, it was his innovative ideas that would eventually lead to the structural downfall of his temple.

Basic Egyptian cosmology equates creation with a mound of earth rising from beneath the waters of chaos. The symbolism is everywhere in Ancient Egypt, even the pointed shape of the pyramids echoes this idea. Amenhotep III’s brilliant plan was to build his temple in the lower plains, allowing the Nile waters to flood his temple each year, with only the inner sanctum remaining above the water line. Each year as the Nile’s waters receded the Egyptian people would witness a miracle of cosmic creation; Amenhotep III’s funerary monument would emerge from the waters as a symbolic re-enactment of creation.

Unfortunately for Amenhotep III, Egyptian adobe does not have the structural integrity to withstand constant flooding without continuous maintenance and upkeep. This, coupled with records of earthquakes throughout the region, meant that his grand Temple of Millions of Years probably only survived to about 1200 BCE, a mere 150 years after his death. Yet the two colossal statues of Amenhotep III that guarded the entrance remained. The quartzite sandstone of the two colossal statues of Amenhotep III however, was significantly more impervious to the flooding waters, and so they remained standing. Even without the temple behind them, they were still magnificent landmarks.

As the centuries passed, the statues continued to be a notable attraction upon the flood plains, especially given they were visible from distances of 10 miles away. Their evolution to the name Memnon occurred in part due to political and cultural variations of the region. Following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BC it was subjected to around 300 years of Greek occupation and was then subsequently annexed into the Roman Empire. As a result, the mythology and stories of the Greco-Romans permeated into Egyptian life and culture. Pausanias captures this changing landscape in his 2nd century CE work Description of Greece, providing 3 concurrent names for the statues:

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.

Pausanias, Description of Greece

Pausanias explains that while most of the population associated the statues with Memnon, the original Thebans still call them Phamenoph (which is more than likely Pausanias’s attempt to phonetically capture the guttural pronunciation of Amenhotep). The third name, Sesostris, comes from Herodotus, and was an idealized form of an Egyptian King, taken from Egyptian historical references with a heavy dose of Greek ideals mixed in.

The name Memnon can be traced to around 27 BCE when another earthquake shook the region of Thebes. The shockwaves caused the northern Colossi to crack and partially collapse, effectively splitting Amenhotep III in half as his torso toppled to the ground. It was after this collapse that a strange phenomenon occurred; the Colossi began to “sing” at dawn:

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.

Strabo, Geography

When the statue suddenly began to sing at dawn, many assumed it was because a ghost or spirit had taken up residence. Its connection with King Memnon occurred due to his parentage; his mother being Eos, goddess of the dawn, and mother of the wind. The singing of the statue at dawn was said to be King Memnon greeting his mother each morning as she rose to start the day. The Memnon statue gathered fame as an oracle; and many made the pilgrimage in the hope of gaining the good fortune that came with hearing the statue’s sound, although the term sing may be a little overblown. Pausanias’s account notes that the:

“sound one could best liken to that of a harp or lyre when a string has been broken”.

Pausanias, Description of Greece

One of the more notable visitors to the statue was the Emperor Hadrian, accompanied by his wife, Vibia Sabina. They certainly made their presence known, recording the visit by having the poet Julia Balbilla compose verses of their experience and etching them onto the leg of Memnon. Balbilla recounts their multi day visit to the statues over a series of three poems, explaining how the emperor was angered the first day when Memnon failed to sing to his wife. Well versed in diplomatic flattery, Balbilla attributes this silence to the statue being awestruck by Sabina’s beauty rather than the omen of bad luck associated with the oracles failure to sing. Thankfully on the second day when both Hadrian and Sabina appeared the statue sang for them, reinforcing Hadrian’s position as divinely appointed Emperor:

Memnon the Egyptian I learnt, when warmed by the rays of the sun,
speaks from Theban stone.
When he saw Hadrian, the king of all, before rays of the sun,
he greeted him – as far as he was able.
But when the Titan driving through the heavens with his steeds of white,
brought into shadow the second measure of hours,
like ringing bronze Memnon again sent out his voice.
Sharp-toned, he sent out his greeting and for a third time a mighty roar.
The emperor Hadrian then himself bid welcome to
Memnon and left on stone for generations to come.
This inscription recounting all that he saw and all that he heard.
It was clear to all that the gods love him.

balbilla, verse etched onto the leg of memnon

While the Colossi still stand, they have become silent once more. Legend has it that around 199 CE the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus travelled to see the Colossi and it failed to sing for him. Afterwards, as an attempt to win favour and dispel any bad luck, the legend reports that he sent a team to restore the statue. What currently stands as the Memnon statue is repairs from the waist up, after which it never sang again. This reconstruction is what accounts for the blockish design of Memnon, especially compared to its twin statue on the left. It was a fairly clumsy attempt compared to the original masterpiece, and as the top half of the original statue was never recovered, repairs were made with limestone blocks.

Despite being a popular notion, the Severus story is complete conjecture. It was a hypothesis floated in 1833 by archaeologist Jean Antoine Letronne which he based purely on Severus being the last notable person to visit Memnon before the repairs, rather than any evidence he completed the reconstruction. Harvard Historian Glen Bowersock challenges this assumption in his article “The Miracle of Memnon”. Bowersock notes that the poet Balbilla was not the only person to leave her thoughts on the Memnon statue, there are 107 Greek and Latin inscriptions carved into the statue’s legs. The latest one inscribed with a date is marked 205 CE which was well after Severus’s visit, not to mention the several undated etchings that are believed to have been created even later.

Bowersock puts forward his own possibility, suggesting that Zenobia Queen of Palmyra may have been the responsible party given the swathe of Egyptian reconstruction projects she sponsored during her reign in 3^rd Century CE. He posits this as theory only, especially given the significant gap in available records between Severus’s 199 CE visit until the 4^th Century CE where the statue in noted as repaired. We will probably never unequivocally know who completed the repairs on Memnon, and they certainly weren’t vocal about wanting credit for it. But, honestly, given the poor quality of the reconstruction, and the fact whoever completed it managed to destroy a popular oracle which certainly would have had bad omens attached, you can’t really blame them for not wanting to record it for posterity.