Graffiti carved on the foot of the Memnon translated into english reads' From Trebulla, Hearing the holy voice of the Memnon I missed you, O my mother, and I prayed that you might hear him too.' These two statues known to us as The collossi of Memnon, that sit alone on the western shore of Luxor became a place of homage for many Greeks, in the same way that people today would visit a holy shrine, because thousands of years ago the right statue was known to sing at Dawn.
When the Greeks controlled Egypt they named the statue The Colossi of Memnon after thier legend of the famous Agamemnon who was the son of the Titan Goddess Eos. Memnon had been slain by Achilles during the Trojan War and the Greeks truly believed the sound that was heard from the statue in the morning was Memnon greeting his mother Eos who wept for the death of her son .
The English poet Lord Byron like many romantic poets of the Victorian era was inspired by this statue and by Egypt and he compared the whistling of the Memnon to memories of the whistling of the wind through the turrets of his home at Newstead Abbey when he wrote a poem entitled'On leaving his ancestral home'.
Oer the centuries travellers came and went and inscribed if they heard the Memnon sing or not.Today from a distance the colossi look unimpressive due to their deterioration, and most travelers get off their bus and stand at the edge of the car park to take their photos, then they all swarm back onto their buses again unaware of the real power this statue alone created throughout Egypt Greece and Ancient Rome.
Do not be discouraged by the appearance and layers of wreckage of the colossi because if you walk over and stand beneath the mighty statues of Amenophis, on closer inspection the right colossi has the most interesting graffiti that has been etched into the stone of it’s legs from the many travelers throughout the centuries to commemorate that they heard the sound or paid homage to the Memnon, words are written in Latin English and the French soldiers during Napoleon’s attempted conquest of Egypt, some of the etched comments written ;
Camilius, hora prima semis' audivi Memnoni. Which means, ‘At half-past the first hour I Camilius, have heard the Memnon’ It is believed that Camilius was an early second - century Roman governor of the province of Egypt.
I would love to climb a ladder armed with large sheets of tracing paper and gently rub the inscriptions out onto the paper to be able to decipher all the comments from the travelers that have come to the Memnon over the centuries creating a book on the graffiti of the Memnon, it is one of the largest and most unusual autograph books written in stone that I have ever seen.
The Roman Emperor Hadrian visited the Memnon with his wife the Empress Sabrina and his court, in their company was a poet and companion of the empress Julia Balbilla, she had two pieces of her own graffiti carved onto the foot of the Memnon , the first visit to the Memnon they did not hear a sound from it and so they cam back again the next day when they did hear the Memnon and so Julia had this inscription carved into the foot which translated into english reads:
‘I Balbilla, when the rock spoke, heard the voice of the Divine Memnon or Phamenoth. I came here with the lovely Empress Sabina. The Course of the Sun was in its first hour, in the fifteenth year of Hadrian’s reign on the 24th day of the month of Hathor, I wrote this on the 25th day of the month of Hathor.
I would love to climb a ladder armed with large sheets of tracing paper and gently rub the inscriptions out onto the paper to be able to decipher all the comments from the travelers that have come to the Memnon over the centuries creating a book on the graffiti of the Memnon, it is one of the largest and most unusual autograph books written in stone that I have ever seen.
When the Greeks controlled Egypt they named the statue The Colossi of Memnon after thier legend of the famous Agamemnon who was the son of the Titan Goddess Eos. Memnon had been slain by Achilles during the Trojan War and the Greeks truly believed the sound that was heard from the statue in the morning was Memnon greeting his mother Eos who wept for the death of her son .
The English poet Lord Byron like many romantic poets of the Victorian era was inspired by this statue and by Egypt and he compared the whistling of the Memnon to memories of the whistling of the wind through the turrets of his home at Newstead Abbey when he wrote a poem entitled'On leaving his ancestral home'.
Oer the centuries travellers came and went and inscribed if they heard the Memnon sing or not.Today from a distance the colossi look unimpressive due to their deterioration, and most travelers get off their bus and stand at the edge of the car park to take their photos, then they all swarm back onto their buses again unaware of the real power this statue alone created throughout Egypt Greece and Ancient Rome.
Do not be discouraged by the appearance and layers of wreckage of the colossi because if you walk over and stand beneath the mighty statues of Amenophis, on closer inspection the right colossi has the most interesting graffiti that has been etched into the stone of it’s legs from the many travelers throughout the centuries to commemorate that they heard the sound or paid homage to the Memnon, words are written in Latin English and the French soldiers during Napoleon’s attempted conquest of Egypt, some of the etched comments written ;
Camilius, hora prima semis' audivi Memnoni. Which means, ‘At half-past the first hour I Camilius, have heard the Memnon’ It is believed that Camilius was an early second - century Roman governor of the province of Egypt.
I would love to climb a ladder armed with large sheets of tracing paper and gently rub the inscriptions out onto the paper to be able to decipher all the comments from the travelers that have come to the Memnon over the centuries creating a book on the graffiti of the Memnon, it is one of the largest and most unusual autograph books written in stone that I have ever seen.
The Roman Emperor Hadrian visited the Memnon with his wife the Empress Sabrina and his court, in their company was a poet and companion of the empress Julia Balbilla, she had two pieces of her own graffiti carved onto the foot of the Memnon , the first visit to the Memnon they did not hear a sound from it and so they cam back again the next day when they did hear the Memnon and so Julia had this inscription carved into the foot which translated into english reads:
‘I Balbilla, when the rock spoke, heard the voice of the Divine Memnon or Phamenoth. I came here with the lovely Empress Sabina. The Course of the Sun was in its first hour, in the fifteenth year of Hadrian’s reign on the 24th day of the month of Hathor, I wrote this on the 25th day of the month of Hathor.
I would love to climb a ladder armed with large sheets of tracing paper and gently rub the inscriptions out onto the paper to be able to decipher all the comments from the travelers that have come to the Memnon over the centuries creating a book on the graffiti of the Memnon, it is one of the largest and most unusual autograph books written in stone that I have ever seen.
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