Position 64 - Colossal “memnon” Statues At Thebes—the Farther One Used To Utter A Cry At Sunrise

Thebes was the goal of many an idle tourist in the days of Roman power, as she is now, and we have before us one of her chief attractions both then and now—the vocal statue of Memnon. We have now crossed the river and are looking nearly due north, with Luxor on our right, the western cliffs on our left, but sweeping out into view in our front and flanking the Ramesseum, the columns of which are just within our range in the distance, on the right (Maps 8 and 9).

Here once stood a noble temple, erected by Amenophis III, and the two colossal statues before us adorned its front, as we have seen them before the pylons at Luxor and Karnak. Of that temple there have survived only a few blocks some hundreds of feet behind these statues. It was wrecked by Merneptah (or Merenptah), the son of Ramses II, in order to secure material for his own temple a quarter of a mile behind the colossi.

The temple built with the materials secured in this contemptible manner has likewise perished. Among other things which Merneptah removed from this temple for his own building was the magnificent stela which you saw in the museum at Cairo, containing a record of Amenophis III's buildings for the gods.

You will remember that Merneptah turned its face to the wall and inscribed upon the back the record of his victory over the Libyans, in which he incidentally mentions Israel (Position 14). This, then, is the spot where that remarkable stela stood, before it was appropriated by Merneptah. These great statues, which have made this place famous since the Romans first occupied Egypt, are of red sandstone, a very hard conglomerate, often called gritstone, which is found in a hill on the northeast of Cairo, called by the Arabs “Gebel el-Ahmar,” that is, “the red mountain.”

From this quarry these huge masses of stone were towed up the river to Thebes. With the pedestal they are now about 65 feet high, but they have lost their crowns, which would have made them nearly 70 feet high. Each statue proper is of one block, the base upon which it rests being a separate piece. You are objecting to this remark and calling attention to the blocks of which the upper part of the further statue is built. That is true, but that work was done by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (193-211 A. D.), a restoration which was a misfortune for the Thebans, as we shall see.

When Amenophis III set up these giants in the 14th century B. C., they were intended as portraits of himself, as all such colossi are royal portraits. Over three thousand years of storm and weather have passed over them, until the features have utterly vanished, and their artistic value is gone.

Meanwhile, the soil of the plain around them has risen over six feet by gradual accumulation, which, with the loss of the crowns, much reduces the height of the statues. Then the earthquake in 27 B. C. overthrew the upper portion of the further colossus, and shortly after that it was noticed that this statue emitted a cry every morning at sunrise, or shortly after. The Greek residents of Egypt immediately averred that the figure must be that of Memnon, the famous son of Eos, the dawn. He had fallen in the Trojan war, and now, said they, he here greets his mother with every returning morning.

Visitors came in great numbers to hear the sound, and scores of foreigners have left records of the fact in inscriptions on the great statue. Men of the highest rank have thus left memorials of such a visit, including the emperor Hadrian, who traveled in Egypt in 130 A. D. In his reign no less than twenty-seven people left inscriptions here. With one exception these inscriptions are in Greek and Latin, and they run from the 11th year of Nero (54-68 A. D.) to the restoration under Septimius Severus, when the noises ceased.

There can be no doubt that the statue actually emitted a sound, as these numerous witnesses testify, and it has been proven that stone such as this conglomerate, when expanding rapidly, does give forth a ringing, metallic sound. As the increasing heat of the morning sun beat upon the statue it rapidly expanded, after having cooled all night, and in so doing the sounds which so many visitors heard were produced.

At high Nile the plain all around us is flooded, and you see that these peasants plow and cultivate their fields to the very bases of the colossi. They consider it a great misfortune that the statues are here, for as the winter advances and the crowds of modern tourists increase, a broad pathway is trampled through their fields all the way from the river to this spot, and they complain bitterly as they see their crops crushed under the feet of a host of visitors all around the statues.

See how impressively the western cliffs rise between the two giants. Those long rows of tomb doors mark the resting-places of the great Thebans, who lived in the days when these statues were set up; and among them is the tomb of the very architect who erected them. The sands of the desert that lie behind have drifted in athwart the face of the cliffs in vast masses like great drifts of snow, and scores of tombs are thus covered awaiting the excavator.

Now we shall wend our way across this plain to that mass of ruins in the distance to our extreme right, the Ramesseum. This position is given by the lines numbered 65, which start in the lower center of Map 9 and extend north. This position is also given on a detailed plan of the Ramesseum (Plan 13).