Colossi of Memnon

About this place

Two enormous stone figures standing alone in an open field beside the west bank road, each about eighteen metres high — and all that remains of the largest temple ever built in Egypt. That is the story: the pair guarded the entrance to the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, which covered more ground than Karnak. But it was built too close to the Nile, and the annual flood undermined it year after year until it collapsed, after which later pharaohs carried off its stone for their own buildings. Only these two survived, because each is a single solid block that could not easily be broken up. The Greek name comes from a mistake. The northern statue cracked in an earthquake in 27 BC and afterwards produced a sound at sunrise — most likely the stone expanding and trapped moisture evaporating in the fissures. Greeks and Romans took it for Memnon, the Trojan hero, greeting his mother Eos, goddess of the dawn, and it became a tourist attraction of the ancient world. Roman visitors carved their names on the base, and the graffiti is still there. The statue was then repaired in the third century AD, at which point the sound stopped and never returned. Stopping is free with no fence and no gate — the figures stand right beside the road and take a few minutes. Excavation continues behind them, uncovering more of the temple and other statues that have been re-erected. Ten minutes to half an hour, and every west bank tour passes them.