Luxor · West Bank
The Colossi of Memnon: A Fifteen-Minute Stop on the West Bank
The Colossi of Memnon are two seated stone statues of Amenhotep III beside the road on Luxor's West Bank, and almost every visitor sees them because they are unavoidable rather than because they planned to. That is fine. They are worth stopping for, briefly, and they get far more interesting once you know they are the front gate of something enormous that no longer exists.
What are the Colossi of Memnon, exactly?
Two seated figures of Amenhotep III, carved from quartzite and set facing east towards the Nile. Each stands roughly 18 metres high, taller again with the stone platforms beneath them, and both are weathered to the point where the faces have largely gone. Smaller figures beside the legs represent the king's mother and his wife, Queen Tiye, with Nile symbolism carved on the sides of the thrones.
The name is a Greek mistake. Visitors from the classical world identified the statues with Memnon, a mythical king killed by Achilles at Troy, and the label stuck for two thousand years. The statues have nothing to do with him. They are Egyptian and pharaonic, made for an Eighteenth Dynasty king who ruled around 3,400 years ago, when Egypt was at its wealthiest and least troubled.
Why do two statues matter so much?
Because of what stood behind them. The Colossi were the gateway figures of Amenhotep III's mortuary temple, which by most measures was the largest temple complex ever built in Egypt, bigger in footprint than Karnak. It had a succession of pylons, courts, avenues of statues and an open solar court, and it was all sited on the flood plain rather than on higher ground.
That siting killed it. The annual inundation undermined the foundations, an earthquake usually placed around 1200 BC brought down most of what was left, and later pharaohs quarried the ruins for building stone. Within a few centuries almost nothing stood except the two guardians at the front gate. When you look at the statues, you are looking at a doorway into a building that has vanished, which is a more interesting thought than the statues themselves.
What is happening in the field behind them?
An excavation and conservation project has been working the temple site for years, and it has changed what there is to see. Archaeologists have re-erected further colossal statues, including standing figures of the king and sphinxes, recovered hundreds of statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, and set fragments back up across the open field behind the roadside pair.
You can see a good deal of this from the road and the fence line without paying anything. Whether you can walk into the excavation area, and what it costs if so, changes as the dig progresses. Ask your driver or guide on the day rather than trusting anything you read online, including here. If a section is open, it takes the stop from five minutes to perhaps twenty, and it is the better half of the visit.
Did the statues really sing?
The northern statue did make a sound, and the Roman world travelled a long way to hear it. After an earthquake, usually dated to 27 BC, cracked the upper part of the figure, it began giving off a noise around dawn, described variously as a lyre string breaking, a struck note, or a groan. The likeliest cause is mundane: overnight moisture trapped in the fractured stone evaporating as the sun hit it and forcing air through the cracks. Ancient sceptics suspected priests with a hammer, and nobody can now prove otherwise.
Greeks and Romans read the noise as Memnon greeting his mother, the goddess of dawn. Hadrian came in AD 130 and waited for it. Visitors cut their names and verses into the legs and base, and around a hundred of those inscriptions survive, the best-known body of tourist graffiti left by the ancient world. The statue was later repaired, usually credited to Septimius Severus at the end of the second century, with the upper body rebuilt in courses of sandstone. The sound stopped and has not been credibly reported since.
How long should you actually give it?
Fifteen minutes. Possibly less. There is no interior, no reliefs to study at length, no shade, and no vantage point at any distance that improves them. You pull off the road, walk over, look up, go round to find the graffiti and the side carvings, take a photograph, and leave.
Treating this as a destination in its own right will disappoint you. Treating it as a punctuation mark between two bigger sites will not. Nobody comes to Luxor for the Colossi. Everybody sees them, and the ones who get something out of the stop are the ones who spent two minutes beforehand understanding what used to stand behind them.
How does it fit the West Bank circuit?
Naturally, because it sits on the main road in. The standard West Bank day runs the Valley of the Kings, then Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari, then Medinet Habu or the Valley of the Queens, with the Colossi taken on the way in or out. Most drivers stop there automatically without being asked.
The order matters more than the stop does. Do the Valley of the Kings first, at opening, while it is coolest and least crowded. Take the Colossi on the way back out, when you are tired and a five-minute leg stretch is welcome. Going the other way round means arriving at the tombs in the hottest, busiest part of the morning to save nothing at all.
When is the best time to stop?
Early morning gives you the statues front-lit, since they face east, and the light on the quartzite is genuinely good for the first hour or two after sunrise. It is also when the coach groups pass through, so you trade quiet for light. Late afternoon puts the faces in shadow with the sun behind them, which is harder to photograph but far calmer.
In summer this is a hot, exposed roadside with no shelter of any kind. Between roughly May and September the middle of the day on the West Bank is punishing, and the Colossi offer nowhere to escape it. Winter, from November to February, is the comfortable season and also the busiest. If you are in Luxor in high summer, do the whole West Bank early and be back across the river by late morning.
What do most visitors get wrong?
Three things. They expect a site and find a lay-by, which sours them on it before they have looked properly. They ignore the excavation field behind, which is now the more substantial thing to see. And they let the hawkers and camel handlers by the parking area turn a pleasant stop into an argument.
On the last point, a firm and friendly refusal works, repeated as many times as necessary. Do not accept anything placed in your hand. Do not agree to a photograph with an animal without settling the price first and in full, and expect it to be renegotiated afterwards if you did not. This is normal at roadside stops across Egypt and is not specific to here, but it catches people out on their first West Bank morning.
Is it worth photographing at all?
Yes, and it is one of the easier Egyptian subjects. The statues are large and isolated against open sky and flat farmland, with the Theban hills behind. There are no barriers to shoot around and rarely a queue in the frame. A wide lens from low down exaggerates the scale, which is the point of them.
What does not work is the close-up. The surfaces are heavily eroded, the faces are gone, and detail shots read as blank stone. Shoot the pair together, or one statue against the hills, or a person at the base for scale. Then put the camera away. The ancient graffiti is worth finding with your eyes but rarely photographs legibly without low, direct light falling across it.
Common questions
Do you need a ticket to see the Colossi of Memnon?+
The roadside view of the two statues has traditionally been free, as they sit beside a public road with no enclosure. Access to the excavated temple area behind them is a separate matter and has changed as the dig has progressed. Ticketing on the West Bank is revised periodically, so confirm the current arrangement with your guide or at the Luxor ticket office on the day.
Are the Colossi of Memnon accessible for wheelchair users?+
Better than most Egyptian sites, since there are no stairs, no tombs to descend into and no long approach on foot. The pull-in is flat and the statues sit close to it. The ground is sand and compacted grit rather than paving, which is manageable but not smooth. There is no shade and no seating, so time the stop for the cooler hours.
Can you go inside or climb the Colossi?+
No. They are solid carved figures with no interior, and climbing on them is not permitted. Barriers keep visitors back from the bases at times, depending on conservation work. This is one reason the stop is short: everything there is to see, you see from the ground in a few minutes of walking around them.
How far are the Colossi from Luxor town?+
They sit on the West Bank a short drive from the river crossing, at the start of the road leading to the Valley of the Kings and the other Theban sites. From central Luxor it is a bridge or ferry crossing plus a brief drive, well under an hour in normal traffic. Every West Bank itinerary passes them, so the journey is never made for their sake alone.
Which of the two statues made the sound?+
The northern one, on your right as you stand on the road and face them. It is the figure cracked by the earthquake and later repaired by the Romans, who rebuilt its upper body in courses of sandstone blocks that you can still pick out today against the original quartzite. The southern statue was never reported to have made any noise at all.
Is there anything else nearby worth adding to the stop?+
The Colossi sit among several less-visited West Bank sites that most itineraries skip, including the temple of Merenptah beside them and the artisans' village at Deir el-Medina. If your day already holds the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut, adding more is a mistake in the heat. If you have a second West Bank day, this is where it goes.
Official sources
Entry rules, opening hours, security advice and exchange rates all move. Check them at the source, not here.
- Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities ↗The ministry lists which tombs and temples currently open.
- UNESCO World Heritage: Egypt ↗The official listings, including the inscription reasons for each site.
Itineraries to start from
