Two seated figures, each approximately 18 meters tall — roughly the height of a six-story building — have been standing in the Theban plain for over 3,400 years. They face east toward the rising sun, hands resting on their knees, expressions worn almost smooth by weather and time. They are the most immediately recognizable free-standing monuments on Luxor’s West Bank, visible from the main road before you reach any of the Valley of the Kings sites, and they cost nothing to visit.
The Colossi of Memnon were never intended to be free-standing monuments. They were the entrance guardians of Amenhotep III‘s mortuary temple — at its completion, the largest temple complex in Thebes, larger even than Karnak. The temple is almost entirely gone. The statues remain.
Who Built Them and Why
Amenhotep III ruled Egypt during the 18th Dynasty, approximately 1391–1353 BCE, during what Egyptologists generally consider Egypt’s most prosperous and culturally productive period. His building program was extensive — he added substantially to Karnak, built the ceremonial lake at Malkata, and commissioned his own mortuary temple on the West Bank at a scale intended to surpass everything that came before it.
The Colossi stood at the temple’s eastern entrance, the first thing approaching visitors would see. Each statue depicts Amenhotep III seated on a throne, his hands on his knees, gazing east. The thrones carry relief carvings of Hapi, the Nile god associated with the annual flood and agricultural fertility. Smaller figures on the sides of the thrones depict Queen Tiye (his wife) and Mutemwiya (his mother) — their placement there was a statement about dynastic continuity and royal family relationships rather than a secondary decorative choice.
Each statue weighs approximately 720 tons and was quarried from a single block of quartzite sandstone from the Gebel el-Ahmar quarries near Heliopolis — now part of greater Cairo, over 700 kilometers upstream. The logistics of cutting, moving, and erecting these blocks represent one of the more remarkable engineering achievements of the New Kingdom.
Why They’re Called “Memnon”
The statues’ modern name has nothing to do with Egypt. After the 27 BCE earthquake shattered the upper half of the northern statue, something unusual began happening at dawn: the cracked stone produced a sound as the morning sun warmed it — a whistle or hum caused by the rapid thermal expansion of dew-soaked quartzite. Greek and Roman travelers, arriving in Egypt with their own mythology, identified the sound with Memnon — an Ethiopian king and son of Eos (the dawn goddess) who fought and died at Troy. In the myth, Eos wept for her son each morning; the statue’s cry at sunrise became Memnon’s response to his mother.
The phenomenon drew pilgrims from across the Roman world. Emperor Hadrian visited in 130 CE; the court poet Julia Balbilla composed verses on the spot when the statue sang for the emperor. Over 107 inscriptions in Greek and Latin survive on the base and legs of the statues — an ancient visitor register carved in stone.
The sound stopped permanently when Emperor Septimius Severus ordered the northern statue repaired around 199 CE. The repair presumably filled the cracks that produced it.
The Lost Temple
The Colossi’s original context — Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple — is the most significant lost monument in Luxor. At its completion it covered over 35 hectares, larger than the Karnak complex, with pylons, courts, sanctuaries, and hundreds of statues. Its destruction came from multiple directions: the temple was built on low-lying land susceptible to annual Nile flooding, earthquakes periodically damaged the structure, and subsequent pharaohs (including Ramesses II) quarried its stones for their own building projects.
The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project — a joint initiative between the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and international archaeologists — has been working to recover what remains. Excavations have uncovered hundreds of statues, fragments of sphinxes, and architectural elements that give a partial picture of the temple’s former scale. The project continues, and the site around the Colossi is gradually yielding more of its buried past.
Visiting the Colossi
The Colossi stand on the main West Bank road, visible from the road and accessible at any hour. There is no enclosure, no ticket office, and no entry fee.
- Entry
- Free
- Hours
- Open at all times — no enclosure
- Photography
- Unrestricted
- Time needed
- 10–15 minutes for a roadside visit; longer if you walk around the base to examine the inscriptions
- Getting there
- All West Bank taxis and private drivers pass the Colossi on the main road; most stop without being asked
What to look for: the ancient visitor inscriptions (Greek and Latin) are carved on the base and lower legs of both statues. They’re worn but legible in good light. The throne carvings showing Hapi and the smaller royal figures are more visible on the northern statue than the southern one.
Best light: early morning, when the statues face into the rising sun — the same direction they’ve faced for 3,400 years. The light on weathered quartzite at 7 AM is considerably better for photography than the flat midday glare.
Combining with other sites: the Colossi are a natural start or end point for any West Bank day. They’re on the road to Medinet Habu (10 minutes further south), near Malkata Palace (Amenhotep III’s royal residence, 12 km south), and en route to the Valley of the Kings turnoff. A five-minute stop here adds context to any West Bank visit without meaningfully affecting your schedule.