Colossi of Memnon

See also: Memnon

The colossi of Memnon are two Sculpture S of monumental stones located on Western bank of Thèbes (Egypt), on the road which leads to the Nécropole thebaine. They are the last vestiges of gigantic the castle of the million years of Amenhotep {{III}}, built during, which does not exist nowadays any more.

History

Strabon, historian and Greek geographer reports that, at the time of the Earthquake which took place in the year -27, most of the temple collapsed and the right colossus fissured shoulder with the basin.

A legend tells that as from this moment, with the rising of the sun, the statue started to emit sounds, with “speaking”. This phenomenon included/understood well today, was due to the dilation of the Quartzite under the effect of the first rays of the sun.

Thus at the beginning of the Christian era, the Greeks allotted the building to Memnon, wire of the Aurore. According to the Homeric legend, Memnon, killed at the time of the war of Troy, found the life at dawn and started to sing. The colossus quickly became a place of pilgrimage for the Greeks, but also for the Romains, which of number heard the oracle of Memnon, including certain emperors like Hadrian in the neighborhoods of the year 130. With 3rd century, Roman Emperor Septime Severe, which wanted to honor the divinity who appeared thus each morning, ordered the restoration of the statue, which since ceased singing.

Actually only the statue of right-hand side (that of left when the colossi of face are looked at) was called Memnon because of the noise which the statue emitted when the wind was engulfed in the cracks caused by the earthquake into -27.

Description

Statues

The two colossi represent the Pharaon sitted on the throne of its ancestors, the hands posed on the knees; on each side of its legs are illustrated his/her mother, Moutemouia, and its wife, Tiyi. On the two with dimensions ones of the throne is reproduced a notation symbolic of the union of the High-Egypt and Low-Egypt, the Sowed-Taouy , represented by two “the Nile” tying the papyrus and the Lys, symbols of the “double country”.

Contrary to the majority of the other Egyptian monuments, these two Monolithe S are made neither of Calcaire, neither of Granite, nor of sandstone, but well of a Brèche Silice uses of Quartzite, “ mass of agatized stones dependant between them by a paste of a remarkable hardness. This very dense matter and of a completely heterogeneous hardness offers to the sculpture difficulties perhaps larger than those which the granite presents; however the Egyptian sculptors triumphed over it with greatest success . ”.

The dimensions, taken on the southern colossus, are the following ones: