An early morning crossing of the Nile brought us to the Colossi of Memnon, before heading off to see other sights in the area.
Standing 18 m the two enthroned statues of Amenhotep III are the first monument most visitors see on arriving in the West Bank. They originally guarded Amenhotep's mortuary temple, thought to have been the largest ever built in Egypt, which was plundered for building material by later pharaohs and gradually destroyed by the annual floods. All that remains are the two faceless colossi, which despite the ravages of time, are an impressive sight. During the roman period the nethermost statue became a popular tourist attraction as it was head to "sing" at sunrise. Prominent visitors to the site to hear this peculiar phenomenon included the Emperor Hadrian, and the colossi are mentioned by classical authors such as Strabo and Pliny. The Greeks had earlier attributed the sound to the legendary figure of Memnon greeting his mother Eos, the goddess of dawn, with a sigh each morning. In fact, the statue had been badly damaged in an earthquake in 27 BC and its musical talent probably had a purely physical cause related to the damage it sustained. Whatever the reason, once the statue was repaired in 199 AD by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, the signing stopped.
