Reading the Colossus

Chapter 1 presents the colossus itself: an overview of the inscriptions and the ancient testimonials to the miracle of Memnon’s voice. While the transformation into a Trojan hero was mostly complete by the time Pliny visited in the latter part of the first century CE, the statue continued to be defined by a set of oppositions: Memnon was both dead and alive, mortal and divine, Egyptian and Greco-Roman, silent and speaking. Similarly, his colossality was both compromised and intensified by his fragmentary state; the marvelous voice emerged from a headless torso. The author argues in this chapter that it was precisely this combination of massiveness and fragmentariness that encouraged tourists and worshippers to engage with the statue. They did so by inscribing its surfaces and inhabiting its sacred space.