17/08/2025
The Colossi of Memnon
•Located in Al Qarna, Luxor, Egypt.
•They are most famous for singing!
•The Colossi of Memnon are two massive stone statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III.
•They date back to the 14th century BCE and stand at the entrance of the ruined mortuary Temple that was once the largest temple in the Theban Necropolis.
•Each statue stands about 19.6 meters (64 feet) tall, weighs around 720 tons, and is one of the largest statues ever created in the ancient world.
•The statues contain 107 inscriptions in Greek and Latin, dated to between 20 and 250 CE; many of these inscriptions make reference to the Greek mythological king Memnon.
•Memnon son of Eos, the goddess of dawn, was a hero of Trojan War and King of Ethiopia as depicted in Homer's poems, who led his armies from Africa into Asia Minor to help defend the city of Troy but was slain by Achilles.
•According to legend, the northern statue would "sing" or "cry" at dawn, and many believed it was Memnon greeting his mother.
•This made the statues a popular pilgrimage site for people across the Mediterranean.
•In 27 BCE, a large earthquake reportedly shattered the northern colossus, collapsing it from the waist up and cracking the lower half.
•The remaining lower half of this statue was then reported to "sing" on various occasions usually right at dawn.
•The “singing” of the statue stopped in 199 CE after Roman Emperor Septimius Severus ordered repairs to the damaged structure.
•The description varied; some said it sounded "like a blow", "the string of a lyre breaking", "the striking of brass" or whistling.
•Various explanations have been offered for the phenomenon; these are of two types: natural or man-made.
•If natural, the sound was probably caused by rising temperatures and the evaporation of dew inside the porous rock at dawn.
•If man made it could be from the people standing around at the base.
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