Memnon, colossus of

On the plains of Egyptian Thebes stands the ruined temple complex of the eighteenth-dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III, with a massive pair of statues guarding the entrance. In the early 1st century ce, one of these colossi, re-identified as the Homeric hero Memnon, began to emit a mysterious cry every morning; this was understood to be a salute to his mother Eos, the dawn goddess. The vocal colossus became a popular travel destination in the 1st and 2nd centuries ce, and individuals left behind inscriptions (proskynemata) in both Greek and Latin to commemorate their visits. While the Memnon colossus does not appear to have been a site of actual religious worship, it encouraged visitors to engage with two traditions simultaneously, being both a massive Egyptian statue with hieroglyphs still visible on its base and also a representation of the shared traditions of Greco-Roman cultural identity. In addition to following in Herodotus’s footsteps in terms of exploration and discovery, visitors to this site also were participating in a tradition that went back to Homer, who provided the earliest reference to Egyptian Thebes in extant Greek literature (Il. 9.381–384). The vocal Memnon colossus is mentioned frequently in both ancient and modern sources, from Strabo and Philostratus to Hegel and Wordsworth.