Why Egypt’s Colossi of Memnon are my wonder of the world

4 hours ago 2

I was 22 and after finishing a degree in Arabic had moved to Cairo to try to learn how to actually speak the language. I was thrilled by the chaotic wildness of the city that is called Umm al-Dunya, the Mother of the World. Millions of people crowd into Cairo night and day. It was dusty and noisy and polluted and I loved it. I also wanted to explore the country, so that first summer I headed south to the temples and tombs of Luxor.

It was an overnight ride of 13 hours on a bus stuffed full of farmers going home after selling their wares in the fleshpots. I fell asleep, soothed by the driver’s Qur’anic verses, and woke up in paradise.

After the mayhem of Cairo, there was total peace. The Nile flowed darkly through green fields punctuated with swaying palm trees and adobe houses. On either side were golden dunes.

I checked in to my hotel, which cost £1 a night and where you had to wear high-heeled wooden sandals (thoughtfully) supplied for the bathroom, in order to avoid the piles of poo. I forgave it everything for the wrought iron balcony which looked over the river, past the street bustling with horse-drawn carriages and persistent souvenir salesmen, and on to the temples.

Biking to the west bank and the main sites was the best and cheapest option I had been advised. I negotiated a price, avoided all offers of guides, and wobbled on to the wooden ferry to cross. It was extremely hot but the breeze blew and I was cycling through tiny oases and vast green wheat fields. I was alone and full of the joy of adventure. No one else was brave, or stupid, enough for the fiery sun.

Colossi of Memnon at dawn with hot air balloons in the sky, Luxor, Nile Valley, Egypt
The Colossi of Memnon at dawn. Photograph: Laurent Sauvel/Getty Images

Ahead to the right, something began to emerge from the fluffy tops of the grasses and the heat shimmer. Two enormous statues sitting side by side: implacable, immovable and immortal. The Colossi of Memnon, sentries to the pharaonic temples beyond. Shelley’s Ozymandias – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert” – rang in my head. They were completely otherworldly: giants in a wheat field.

They were built around 1350BC and depict Pharaoh Amenhotep III. They are a towering 18 metres tall and guard Amenhotep III’s temple complex, which in its time was the largest and richest in Egypt. The pharaoh was worshipped as a god on Earth and then buried here after his death. They gaze east towards the rising sun and the river. Between their legs are three smaller statues: his mother, his wife and a daughter. The statues are covered in Roman and Greek inscriptions, an ancient vandalism. Many of these mention the Greek god Memnon, who the early travellers from Greece and Rome wrongly thought the statues represented.

Amenhotep III made a tactical error. He built his complex on the flood plain and so almost nothing of it remains except for the Colossi. They are, though, the first of the magnificent Pharaonic sites of Luxor’s west bank, so perhaps they are now the metaphorical guardians of all of them.

At the time, I knew none of this. I had been lazy with my guidebook. I was simply transfixed by history. I stopped and stared and wondered at the magnificence and tragedy of them. I reached for the understanding that death and decay may win but the spirit lingers invincibly. The sun beat down on my head but I didn’t want to move.

Then, all the hairs on my arms stood up. The statues were singing. It was a high-pitched, wavering song that felt like it was coming to me from thousands of years before. Of course, it was just a strange physical trick of wind and stone, but for me it was pure magic.

Alice Morrison’s series Arabian Adventures is on BBC iPlayer

Read Entire Article
Infrastruktur | | | |