From time to time over the years, we in Ireland have had our moving statues. But the Egyptians have eccentric monuments as well, the most famous being the singing statue of Amenhotep III, across the river from the great Temple of Karnak near the Valley of the Kings at Thebes.
Amenhotep III was the most prominent of four pharaohs of that name who ruled the Two Kingdoms between 1500 and 1300 BC. During his reign he constructed a granite statue of himself to mark the entrance to his temple, but when it was in place, his subjects noticed in fear and wonder that each morning the statue sang out a greeting to the rising sun, as soon as the first rays of sunshine fell upon its mouth. Descriptions of the noise varied from the breaking of a harp string, to the clang of a hammer on a piece of metal, to the muffled sound of human voices.
Years later, the ancient Greeks, devised their own poetic explanation for the statue's strange behaviour. They recalled the grief of Eos, goddess of the dawn, when her son, Memnon, was killed by Achilles during the Trojan war; she was inconsolable, it seems, and wept for him every morning - the signs of which can still be seen as dew. To the Greeks, unaware of the provenance of the Egyptian monument, it was obvious that this large statue was one of Memnon, and that when his mother kissed his lips at daybreak, the hero acknowledged the salutation with a mournful song.
Thus the famous statue became known to posterity as the Colossus of Memnon. It was visited by the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, who gave his own account of its distinctive whine, and was a major tourist attraction as recently as the early 19th century.
But what really caused the daily cry of the Colossus? Some scholars of the ancient world speculated that Egyptian priests hid in a secret chamber in the statue during the night, and sang to greet the sunrise every morning, but after careful surveillance, the theory had to be discarded. Another more plausible explanation was that, since the statue was hollow, the heat of the rising sun on the porous granite might heat the air inside, and force it through some tiny crack or outlet, producing a sound to which a listener might give his own interpretation.
If this be so, was it a natural oddity, or was it clever and deliberate design? More than likely we shall never know, because the singing statue has now been mute for a century and a half.